As soon as Deepti Naval came on the stage at Times Litfest in Delhi, someone from the audience screamed ‘Chamko!’ The actress, who was called Miss Chamko in 1981’s Chashme Buddoor, laughed and said, “This is the last thing I wanted to hear today.”

Deepti, who was at the fest to talk about her latest book, A Country Called Childhood, which is about her childhood memories, told the audience to read it like a literary work. She said, “I was not writing as a celebrity. This is the work of a writer.”

The actress, who has played the role of a “sweet and simple” middle-class girl in films like Chashme Buddoor and Saath Saath, told the audience that her off-screen personality is different from her onscreen image. “Meri jo screen image hai, main usse kaafi opposite hoon. Yeh jo formula hai humare yahan that ‘she is so sweet and simple’, yeh mere par toh nahi baithta. I’m neither simple nor sweet,” she said, adding, “Middle class girls have big dreams. They are determined and are ready to fight it out with society, starting with their parents. They are not going to sit back and accept that whatever I will get in life, I will live with that. That’s a false representation of how middle-class girls are. They are feisty, they know what they want and are out there to achieve what they want.”

Author Yasser Usman, who interacted with her, told the audience that even though the book is not about films, it does mention how she gravitated towards films from an early age. He also shared that Deepti had phases when she was smitten by Meena Kumari, Rajesh Khanna and Sharmila Tagore while growing up, and she ran away from her home because she didn’t want to live in the walled city of Amritsar. After watching films like Kashmir Ki Kali and Arzoo, she felt that Kashmir is the place to be, so at the age of 13, she ran away on a train, but fortunately was found at Pathankot and returned home.