Samir Soni: I have shared some of the lowest moments of my life

Actor Samir Soni discusses his book ‘My Experiments with Silence: The Diary of an Introvert’ and why he finds acting to be cathartic and liberating

‘I don’t feel too great. Tired and fed up. I hope I get the job. Don’t want to dump my insecurities on other people. And I won’t…’ The lines from one of the pages of actor Samir Soni’s diary, which he shares in his book My Experiments with Silence: The Diary of an Introvert (Om Books), gives readers a peek into some of the rough phases in his life and how he encountered them.

During the pandemic, the publishing house had reached out to him with the idea of a memoir. But Soni was not keen on a memoir. “We were neck-deep in the pandemic; I observed what everyone was going through. I thought if I share what I have written in my diary, people will relate to it,” he says over the phone from Mumbai. The timing of the book was apt, going by the increased focus on mental health.

The pages from his diary were chosen carefully so as to not sound repetitive, and interspersed with incidents from his childhood and early challenges in his acting career and personal life.