Recently, Abhay Deol opened up about his difficult upbringing in an interview with Humans of Bombay, recalling how a teacher used to make fun of him since he was from a wealthy family.
Reflecting on his childhood, Abhay said it was, in some respects, typical of an Indian joint family. He admitted that the celebrity of his family caused a gap between them and the realities of a typical Indian home. He clarified that certain of the experiences he had were exclusive to belonging to a well-known family—experiences that a person from a less well-known background would never have.
When asked about his experiences, Abhay responsed, “When you come from a film family, a lot of it is written about. Many times in school, you’d be asked personal questions like, ‘We read this, we heard that, is it true?'”
“There were teachers who would be extra nice to me because they were fans of my family, but then there were teachers who would be extra nasty because they judged my family. I never knew what to expect—either some were overly favourable, or they were extremely harsh because they saw me as privileged and undeserving of that privilege.”
He then gave an example of a tuition teacher who once humilated him, simply of disliking his family. He adds, “There was one teacher who would really insult me in class because she didn’t like my family. She would publicly humiliate me, passing comments about my family, and if something was in the news, she would say it loudly in class, like, ‘You people do this.’ As a kid, you get shocked and internalise these things because you can’t speak out.”
“As an adult, I feel she was a very troubled person to insult a child and his family in front of the class. It wasn’t even in a regular class—it was in tuition. My friends kept quiet because of how harshly she spoke about my family.”
The next movie that Abhay will be in is Bun Tikki. Zeenat Aman, Anjali Anand, and Shabana Azmi play important parts in the Faraz Arif Ansari-directed movie. Produced by Jyoti Deshpande, Dinesh Malhotra, and Marijke Desouza, Bun Tikki is distributed by Manish Malhotra’s Stage 5 Productions.