Sandhya Mridul on her new book, 'Untamed'

After television serials, films such as Page 3 and Honeymoon Travels, reality TV, and stand up comedy, Sandhya Mridul has struck a chord with audiences with her book of poems, titled Untamed.

She says the writing wasn’t ever meant to be a book but a process of healing. “You can say I put the entire process of healing to good use,” she says. “I have always valued pain and have lost so many people in my life [but] instead of [giving in to] negative emotions, I worked on myself and this book is a product of that work.”

Actor Shabana Azmi, who launched her book, said courage is an integral part of the book. Mridul would write a few pages, and show it to her friends, some of whom were extremely encouraging. “Even now when I hold the book in my hand and read my name on it, it feels like a miracle. The courage [I had to exercise] was to allow myself to feel everything; it broke me, it healed me,” she says.

Her on-screen persona of being this strong willed, cool girl filled with mischief and the book that is a slice of life dipped in philosophy seems like a dichotomy, but she says: “I have never let the child in me die. The child is a brat, all my friends are in a state of shock over my book of poems. Shabana jee told my mom that ‘yeh toh hamare group ki joker hain, itni mastikhor hai, yeh kaise ho gaya?’ ( She is our group’s joker and is very naughty. How did the book happen?”)

Two months ago, Mridul put up her stand-up comedy show. “ I am embracing various parts of me that are not all goofy, fun loving and bold. I was ignoring one side of me. Mischief, humour as well as seriousness is part of me,” she explains.

She says that even if someone is funny, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t sad. “I started following late Hollywood actor Robin Williams [on social media],” she recalls, admitting that she could sense his pain.

She recalls a time when she was going through an emotional upheaval. “I became difficult for people to handle. People didn’t want to see the other side of me. I was tired of being misunderstood.”

The book began during the pandemic. During Covid, writing had consumed Mridul so much that she would complete her chores and run to her diary, pull out her green pen and start writing furiously. “It was like [I was under] a spell,” she says.

Did writing the book help her work through her issues then? “It brought tremendous awareness of what I was feeling. In my initial writing, there is a lot of feeling I am less than what I am and that I am letting people down. I failed to accept the shadowy side of life and started believing in the image of me as this bubbly cool rockstar,” she mulls.

So, does she now see the thorn gone from memory ? “Yes, but I also know that there will be more thorns,” she shrugs, adding that she now has the tools to deal with them.

Mridul’s celebrity friends including Vidya Balan, Dia Mirza, Konkona Sen Sharma, and Tannishtha Mukherjee have been reading her poems aloud and savouring the emotions expressed in them. Now they are asking her to read out her poems onstage.

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