Tongue-tied young boy, incorrigible flirt, family man: Om Puri’s controversial new biography, authored by wife Nandita, unmasks the actor
Even when as young as five, Om used to collect coal from the railway tracks and bring it home to be used as fuel. Once, Om and his friend found an egg. Om had never seen one but his friend explained that it was something edible. His mother would not let them enter the house with it but gave them an empty oil tin can and some wood. The boys lit a fire, boiled the egg in the tin can and then are it with relish. It was perhaps the first time little Om had tasted any kind of non-vegetarian food.
Om’s duty was to fill water from the hand pump in the ground floor and during summer he had to sprinkle water on the kutcha terrace as the family slept there on summer nights. Besides, like his cousins, he had to wash his undergarments himself. Though he was treated with kindness, at times he did feel like a poor cousin. One difference he noticed was that while his cousins wore readymade vests of soft cotton, he wore the coarser hand-stitched ones. But these small things did not bother him much.
It was in his Mamaji’s house that Om’s acting skills were first noticed. Om always had a tremendous power of observation and during his free time, he would often wander away to the marketplace or to the railway station, stand in a corner and observe people. Then he would mimic the eccentricities and mannerisms of the people who had caught his attention.
One such person was the dom (keeper) at the village samsaan (crematorium). He had a spasmodic cough and would cough most of the time. Om used to imitate his cough very closely to the amusement of his cousins. They in turn told the elders and even they were amused by his act. Once some relatives came a visiting and his Mamaji asked Om to perform his ‘cough act’ in order to impress them.
Om was an extremely shy lad. But he could not defy his Mamaji. So he requested that the lights in the room be turned off, the old radio be switched on and kept at zero volume. The little light from the radio flickered on the shy actor’s face as he performed to a dark room full of people. His relatives were quite impressed when he ended his performance and his Mamaji was proud of his shy nephew. Later, of course, enacting the most emotional or intimate scenes before several people in broad daylight would hardly matter to this shy lad from Punjab.
UNLIKELY ERO — OM PURI
Author: Nandita C Puri
Publisher: Roli
Pages: 208
Price: Rs 395
