Before our meeting on a rainy day in August 2004, one remembered Om Puri as Anant Welankar, the conscientious cop of Ardh Satya , who made us believe how an average angry Indian young man looks like. Or, as the crushed borgadar Hari Mandal of Aarohan , who made us realise what the life of a tiller is in independent India. At a time when Bollywood was glossing over the potholes of socio-economic reality of the country, Om Puri presented the face of the oppressed and the vulnerable. Of course, none could forget the intoxicated Ahuja of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro or the baffled Banwarilal Pandey of Chachi 420 but such was his searingly intense image on screen that anything light from him didn’t really register.
That day he was in Delhi to promote King Of Bollywood , a satire on a fading Bollywood star. I suggested if it was a label he aspired for. He smiled wistfully. The film would only be a footnote in his sterling career but that day he opened some lesser known chapters of his life with a tinge of self deprecatory humour. How the son of a railway employee with modest means made it to the big screen. He narrated stories of playing marbles, preparing tea in a coal locomotive. “There is so much heat that your timing has to be perfect. One moment extra and the tea would get charred. Now, you know how I get my timing right,” he laughed. He worked at a tea stall, picked coal from the tracks and learnt to cook food and tales. “I have seen life in close up and always tried to find a way out. Like early in my career during foreign trips I used to cook daal chawal through ingenious ways in my hotel room.”
His short-tempered father, who spent some years in the Army, was surprised by his choice. “In those days in Punjab acting was not an easy choice to make as a career and that too with a face like mine,” he pointed to the pock marks, caused by small pox, which later added depth to his characters. Young Puri was also interested in a career in Army. He was a boy scout but his father didn’t have the means to send him for training. At his maternal uncle’s place, he developed a passion for acting. A great observer, he could mimic people around him like the old man who guarded the crematorium. Be it troubled relationships in the family or hormonal rush in adolescence, Puri learnt a lot from the theatre of life before he took stage. Before Ebrahim Alkazi took him under his wings at the National School of Drama, it was Harpal Tiwana, the doyen of Punjabi theatre, who moulded Puri into a fine actor.
Colleagues who saw him hone his craft say he didn’t require a magic formula to perform. Perhaps, that’s why he could slip into characters from different regions smoothly. For many, he epitomised the Dukhi of India, a character he played in Satyajit Ray’s Sadgati but Puri kept trying to steer clear of image trap right from Disco Dancer to Narsimha to his comic performances in a series of films with Priyadarshan. In between, destiny offered him work in international cinema and Puri excelled there as well.
Over the years, we met many times and he agreed that the industry didn’t challenge him enough after a point but he didn’t carry any remorse. “When I started who would have thought that I would one day become one of the most recognisable Indian face in World Cinema.” He continued to put in hard yards in films which promised much, delivered little. He believed cinema presents two sides of the same coin and that it should have a twin objective of providing entertainment and also serve as a mirror to society’s problems. Never shy of accepting his mistakes or taking a politically incorrect stand, Puri was the antithesis of the typical diplomatic Bollywood personality. We observed it recently when he backed Pakistani actors working in Hindi films even when he was not directly connected with any of those films.
To me his definitive performance was in Aakrosh . As the anguished silent adivasi, wrongly accused of his wife’s murder, one could read volumes in his eyes. No wonder, Govind Nihalani didn’t use a single word in the first 10 minutes of the film.
In a field where experts often oversell talent, once Naseeruddin Shah, who as a classmate watched Puri grow in NSD and later FTII, once told me that Puri was his inspiration right from NSD days. “He was the most hard working student. Later on I realised why people like Puri work so hard. He was not a naturally gifted actor. Puri was the man who showed us that you need not be blessed by nature to become a great actor.”
Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah
Versatile artist: Om Puri excelled in different genres and mediums. Some of his landmark performances on television include Bharat Ek Khoj, Tamas, Kakaji Kahin. He also excelled in parallel cinema and mainstream films like Mirch Masala, Ghayal, Maachis and Dev. Similarly, East Is East and City of Joy brought him global adulation.
