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Deeksha Joshi. Being a beauty in the film industry is no big thing but this next sensation is no less than a star in the Gujarati film industry and web series and theatre. By performing such different types of roles in her acting career and being a part of a music video, she has already won the hearts of many and is a big name in the state already. But close and very few know that there is a writer hidden under that beautiful actor.
Her literary roots directed us somewhere deep down to her writing talent and we were left amazed.So we wanted the world to know this side of Deeksha Joshi too.
Deeksha Joshi : Writer and Blogger.
So let's dig into the interview we had with her.
1) Deeksha Joshi in 5 sentences. "Tu bov evo chu" quoting this dialogue of yours ,we would like to know what is Deeksha Joshi all about?
I believe I am still in the process of exploring and discovering myself and it will last a lifetime. All I know for sure about myself is that I am an empathetic and hard working individual. Helping the marginalised and dependent and doing my work with all my heart, that'll be me.
2) We went through your words. One thing we would like to ask is : What does "eco feminism" mean to you ?
Feminism is a word that is abused and misinterpreted these days. It is a concept that believes in equality. It believes that no one thing is better and should be treated better than other things. Eco feminists are those who believe that Nature has an equal stand in the world and that we must fight for keeping it safe just like we fight for certain sects in the human society. I love animals irrespective of the species and maybe later I will have a place of mine where I get to treat all animals.
3) Feminism topic is so much used now that it seems overrated! What made you stick there?
My college had properly introduced me to the concept and a lot of things in my life have changed after I learnt about the rights I have and that I can question and reason out everything I wish to. Simple things like there should be no hierarchy and that it is required to fight patriarchy, are basics, they need not be taught.. but the society we live in has suppressed us so much that we have no idea who we are.
4) Deeksha Joshi! What does define you more? Your passion or your work?
My passion lies in working for myself and for others. I wish to give my years in loving animals and being empathetic towards issues that require it.
5) "My face gets more like than my thoughts” this explained the most eligible truth of the society. But on our part, our bread and butter is writing, so now we would love to know your love towards this field.
I have always wanted to know people.. I love talking to them and learning about them, the way they feel and think. I can never reduce a person to just one thing about her/him/they. And so when someone does that to me, it makes me angry, but I also realise that this is how the society today functions.
6) Your write-ups, and the thoughts you share were more towards the rights of transgender community or rather we would say gender exploitation! We would love to know more from you regarding that!
When is general feminism- the term is flung across , people tend to talk only about women rights. Feminism, as I said is about all of us. It fights for that little boy who gets beaten up by a bully and can't defend himself; for the female who identifies herself as a man; for that cat who has been kicked by teens for fun; for that man who is not muscular enough and is very lean and people tend to make fun of his body. Gender, yes! But I fight against anything that is insensitive.
7) What is writing to you? How did you started writing, and what's your favorite genre to write if any. Also, Who inspires you to write? Who's your Muse? Where do you get your ideas?
I loved to play with words since I was a kid. Have been writing ever since I was little. Initially I would metre my poems but as I grew I started expressing through free verses and prose. My favourite genre at the moment is critical prose. I've been inspired by a multitude of writers (mainly American, English and Writers who write about the marginalised ) also somewhere post colonial and contemporary writers. I think ideas are all in our head. It is important to properly shape them (while executing).
8) How do you define art in your words?
Art is anything that comes from within in the form of a creation. As long as the purpose of art is to express inner turmoil, feelings, what the outer does to the inner.. or a fluke too can be art.
9) Who are some of your favorite authors that you feel were influential in your work?
I haven't really taken reference from authors since I feel what I can give and talk about will come only from my inside because I have had different experiences from anybody else.. I think my experiences have been the influence or the driving force
10) What impact have they had on your writing?
My writing has at some level a personal connection. Experiences have only made my writing more honest.
11) What is your favorite piece of work that you wrote? Share with us.
A short story:
Anto-name
His parents admitted him to an open school. His mother had almost recovered from pancreatic cancer and his sister Sheila, who was longing to have a baby for five years now had finally delivered a healthy infant. The atmosphere at home and around seemed to have suddenly brightened. People smiled more often than before. His house flooded with guests and their children and their toddlers. Walls gleamed, floors shined and silk was cut into pieces and stitched to make matching table cloths. There was a lot of action happening around. It’s during events like these that people tend to not invest time commenting on the black sheep of the house. Nothing was even close to what everything was back then. Earlier, his Facebook home page would be full of cliché quotes with blurry background images that people kept posting every now and then. He hated them. Especially this one particular quote which he almost reported as spam: “Life Is a Gift”. Then he'd think of folks who posted these quotes. They’d cry about a million problems everyday but for the virtual world they became preachers of optimism. He used facebook because well! this was the only way in which he'd know what others were up to. He had a hundred and forty friends in his friend list but only two friends he talked to. Only two friends at all. Rati kaki and Anushi. Rati kaki was an aunt from his father’s side and Anushi, whom he preferred calling Anu was Rati kaki’s daughter. Every Saturday they’d video chat. School had been a horrible place. There was more wrong that had happened to him than the usual teasing and ragging. This was a fourteen year old who fought against all odds by himself.He remembered the incident when a girl he thought was his friend had gone and told the teacher that he had developed feelings for a boy in class. The teacher counseled him on why it was important to pay attention only to academics and nothing else. Thanks to this friend everyone in the class came to know about it and his life turned into a pseudo hell for till he left the school. They would make fun of his hair, clothes and everything that made him him. He was glad to now study from home. It had been extremely difficult convincing his parents to take the step as they’d been changing his schools since he was a child. There was nothing that was ever going to make him nostalgic about the place. Nothing that’d make him regretful about the decision he’d taken. He missed Shilpi Atre at times though. She was his biology teacher and he was only comfortable talking to her. She played a major role in talking it out with his parents and making them admire him for who he was. He remembered how she had told them about his gorgeous doodles at the end of each notebook and suggested them to provide him with the books and canvases he asks for as it would make an unimaginable artist out of him one day. Was there anything that was memorable about school? “No!" he exclaimed almost aloud as if reassuring himself.
He had deviated from the original thought. And with this realization he stood up banging his numb left foot and dragging it to the kitchen where Rati kaki had been making cold coffee for him and Anu. It had been two days since they’d come. After a brief exchange of smiles he whispered in her ears: “Please put extra sugar in mine.” Kaki giggled and nodded. He then ran towards the garden where Anu was sitting, reading one of the five novels she’d got this time and started talking to her about them. Anu had always had a strange blue bag with her. And this bag was never novel empty. In fact she made sure she had five novels in it.. always. It didn’t depend on the number of days she’d be away from her library at home. She had set this norm since as long as he’d known her interest in books. He flipped through her novels and said something about parchments. She nodded.
“It’s funny how interesting covers attract some people more than their titles. I mean look at this one. Flashy..trippy..like someone’s barfed rainbows after choking on lab gases. And what does the title read? ‘Yoga’. Since when have you started reading about Yoga? I mean I always thought you liked fiction.” “It’s about a blind Mr. Gateau who hates doing Yoga.” Anu snapped almost immediately. “And I’m not telling you more.” “Ah! There we are!” he breathed, satisfied. He felt secure. He knew her. He still knew her. And he’d always be that close. “Kaki’s made coffee” he smiled. “Go ahead I’ll be there in five.” She smiled back. He brushed the lush green grass with his warm hands while he left. Garden was a place he preferred calling ‘My Workspace’. All the plots and characters of his stories were born here. All the grotesque sonnets were composed near the coconut tree while swinging on a torn branch from another one of his favourite trees. All the cartooning and doodling was done well! Anywhere. He could doodle even in his sleep. This artist residing inside him never slept. He kept on rhythmically synchronizing circles even in the deadest of his sleeps.
A loud noise from the television beamed across the living room. A woman was talking about how becoming a shade lighter has helped her gain confidence. All of this she said at one go. It was a part of a fairness cream advertisement. “Kaki.. coffee?” he asked. After grabbing the glass he waited for Anu. Brown coffee powder swam on frothy cream. This was Rati Kaki’s thing. He sipped once and then put the glass on a glass table. He believed the reflection made the glass look like a sculpture. “Barbara Hepworth could’ve made something like this!” He exclaimed aloud. “Illusions.. illusions everywhere..
but reflections and shadows aren’t illusions..
could they therefore be examples of nothingness in shape and form?” he asked himself.
“Well then that which does not exist can never be thought of or imagined ..so.. so.. this is never going to end.. oh my!” he said it as if this was his moment of enlightenment. Procrastination had become a pleasure giving addiction for him. And it was especially funny when he’d use existential questions as means to get rid of the feeling that’s almost impossible to categorize. The kind of feeling that comes when one feels lost, isolated, blank,passive, purposeless and Yet.. there.. living.. moving.. breathing.. Sensing. He’d felt it once and the very next moment..he as if instinctually destroyed it by asking himself another question cyclical in nature. He liked to dive into this pool of hours of conscious, sub-conscious layers of thoughts.He’d startle back into reality feeling creepy as and when he’d realize it was procrastination. But even those chills weren’t bewitching enough to let him out of the habit.
“Rohini” Anu shouted. “You did wait for me right?” A momentary silence followed this one. It was sudden and brokethe stream of sequences he had been visualizing. His dead eyes made it impossible for her to decipher anything till she spotted the fly. It was sitting on the rim of his glass rubbing froth off of its hands. “I’ve asked you a thousand times not to call me by that name.” He growled at her while turning his face away from her towards the window on the right. “It’s impossible to get your attention otherwise.” she laughed. He hated the fact that thisprotest was taken in jest. He hated the name she had just used.All these years he’d hoped for someone who would be able to understand him and acknowledge that he didn’t have to be acknowledged. “I wish there were more.. ah! Some more people like you. My utopian world has transported you here” He said once to Anu. Her instinctual question to this was “What is it like? Your Utopian world..?”
“I might sound crafty here but I assure you it’s honest. I am no one, nothing and yet everyone and everything. I could be a cross between a dragon and slug. But you know what makes it perfect? The fact that nobody would laugh at me and want to make me realize that I’ve got qualities of neither of them. Theywould not want to accept or learn my definition of the creatureI’d be because I guess they’d all be like me.. flux-ish. You know I do not like it when people say they accept me as I am. It feels like I’m a participant in a reality show constantly being judged or in a court being estimated and calculated by conservatives and liberals.”
“Flux-ish?” Anu liked the metaphysics he’d apply in almost every conversation he’d have with her.
Anu had been transported from his utopian world. Why then would she have reacted so carelessly, he thought to himself. He was angry.. again..like yesterday.. like every other day. This wasn’t utopia. This wasn’t ‘his utopia’. Here someone else’s labels worked.
Someone else’s negations defined him.
Rohini hated his name.
He was a boy born as girl.
12) Deep incidence attract deep thoughts.... So your favourite blog "an andro shot" was on a guy and his childhood friend And which ended abruptly! The family background of the guy was described beautifully along with him being close with his aunt and Anu. What made you think this deep ?
I think it just came to me as and when I started writing it. And as ideas came I morphed and structured the story in such a way that now it seems like the best thing that could have been made from the raw material of ideas that i had had.
13) What is some advice that you would give to someone aspiring to become writer?
Do not try hard to write something. Flow of thoughts cannot be forced. Read more, experience newer experiences and be honest in your writing.
14) How's social media helpful for a writer?
Well! Social media today is a very powerful medium. It can make or break a society. Put up your work online and you never know who might end up reading it.
15) Did you ever use writing in your theater ?! Like dialogue writing or anything related to script?
Oh yes! I've written my monoact scripts and scripts for plays and skits too.
16) Think of your favorite quote. Now without revealing that tell us the reason of that being your favorite?
Trust me I don't believe in quotes. They end up boxing our beliefs and thoughts.
17) Which life lesson you learned from your college?
I have learned to value myself and prioritise myself and question every thought.
18) "Paisa na leta ho, odkhan ma se”not by the mean of offending anyone who helped you to grow as a person?
A lot of people. Seriously everyone I come in contact with teaches me a lot.
19) A mom daughter relationship is undefinable! But yet we will ask you to express yours in few words! Also, your dad was a bit hesitant with your acting career, how did that change?
Mum has been supportive always and so has my father. We have arguments but it is good that there's at least some communication happening between us. They are very open to understanding my points of view.
20) We will free feel to call you an artist now! So by choice or that is hereditary?
My parents and theirs have been extremely talented too.. but I guess professionally it has been me who took the first step to become a freelance artist at this age in our family.
21) Have you ever thought to write a film in which you act? If yes what genre you would write for you?
Of course I have. A number of ideas keep coming to me. Anything that expresses what goes inside human mind (so basically films that have a more emotional, psychological impact) will be the films that I'll be able to make.
22) Tell us something about your acting career?
I have been doing theatre since childhood. And I always knew I'd be acting as either a hobbyist or professional.
23) Tell us about all the projects you have been the part of? And which role you like the most?
a) Deeksha
b) Tanvi ( Colorbaaj )
c) Riddhima ( Shubh Aarambh )
d) Jaya ( Karsandas , pay and use )
It has got to be Jaya, since talking in that accent has really been difficult. I am speaking in Gujarati since the last one year. Being a non- Gujarati I was always conscious that I don't goof up with the language on screen.
24) Something you want to tell to the youth.
Try and figure out what you wish to do in life and start questioning. Become empathetic.
25)What will the first and last page of your autobiography say?
I never wish to write an autobiography.
*Drowning in your eyes, we have taken that extra canine of yours, as a rose to our eyes*
Thank you for sharing your life with us.
It was a pleasure in interviewing you Deeksha and it was a complete fun in knowing you in a complete different aspect. You are indeed hard working, humble and sweet. We wish you all the best for your future and we hope all your movies go as blockbusters and some day we hope that we would be able to read a book written by you.
Compiled and curated by Divya Gulabani and Anshika Vivek