Saibal Chatterjee New Delhi

Along overdue biography of one of India’s most accomplished and versatile screen actors, Unlikely Hero: Om Puri has been in the news for the wrong reasons ever since it came into the public domain. While the hoopla may help sell the book, the media-fuelled assumption that it peddles scurrilous nuggets about Om Puri’s personal life is less than fair to the subject and the actor’s wife and author, Nandita C Puri.

This isn’t obviously a kiss-and-tell, Boswell-inthe- boudoir effort. The 200-page book etches a lucid, illuminating portrait of a man and an actor who rose from humble beginnings to become India’s first true crossover actor and the only film personality from the subcontinent to be inducted into the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his contribution to cinema in the UK. His is a fascinating tale – Om was literally a rag-picker as a boy who scrounged for coal in a Punjab railway station yard – that was crying to be told. It has now been done, and it has a yielded a cracker of a story.

Says Nandita, a seasoned journalist and writer: “It isn’t easy making a clean breast of your past. We are hypocrites, so we cannot accept the honesty of a man who speaks the truth about himself. I guess we all want to speak the truth but cannot quite bring ourselves to do it publicly. I hope this book sets a trend.”

She says: “When an act of honesty is met with a slur, it is tough to digest. I’ve been getting both bouquets and brickbats. It hasn’t been easy. I am now wondering whether I should have written the book at all.” Pointing out that the book is dedicated to her son, she asks: “Why would any woman put her own marriage at stake for the sake of a book or write anything that would hurt her son?”

Nandita, who began her professional life as a journalist in Kolkata, is now a columnist with a book of short stories and two screenplays behind her. She is currently working on her first novel – a historical epic.

Her background has come in handy. The Om Puri book is an easy read because it does not lose its way in the labyrinths of facts and analyses. “It is about an ordinary man who has risen to extraordinary heights,” says the author. “I approached the task primarily as a journalistic storyteller, with a blend of empathy and detachment. Om has done 250-odd films. It would have been extremely boring for the reader had I gone into great detail about every piece of work he has done. The canvas is so huge, so I had to be selective.”

Unlikely Hero marks a first in Indian publishing history. Never before has a writer in this country authored a biography of her spouse. Nandita mentions the instance of Billy, actress-turned-psychiatrist Pamela Stephenson’s book on her husband, the irreverent Scottish comedian Billy Connolly. “It created quite a stir in the UK when it came out,” she adds. Connolly had opened his heart about his tortured childhood to his wife and confessed to being abused by his father in his early teens.

As a wife writing her internationally feted husband’s biography, Nandita had what could be perceived as a distinct advantage. She was privy to the kind of inside information that ordinary biographers can only dream of. “I have been on the sets of all his films for many years,” she says. “So I’ve seen him at work from closer quarters than anyone else could have.”

But that did not necessarily make Nandita’s job any easier. “It was very, very difficult striking a balance between being an integral part of his life and functioning as just a writer,” she says.

When Roli Books approached her, Nandita was clear that she would not do a coffee table book on Om. “There is no documentation on the leading lights of non-mainstream Hindi cinema – Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil and Om Puri. So I felt that a book on one of them should serve the purpose of providing insight into the work of the others,” she explains.

In a 35-year career that has taken him around the world, Om Puri has worked with the very best in the business – directors like Satyajit Ray, Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihalani and Richard Attenborough and co-actors like Jack Nicholson, Tom Hanks, Patrick Swayze and a host of Indian superstars. “I had to get in touch with people across the globe for interviews,” says Nandita. “The process took eight to ten months.”

The book, she reveals, contains only a fraction of what she knows about Om and of what his coworkers shared with her. “I could not have rambled on... so I focused on what was absolutely essential while striving to retain my integrity as a journalist,” Nandita adds, citing the example of her conversation of Sandip Ray. “His observations ran into reams, but I took only one point. He told me that Om Puri is the only actor he knows who does not blink before the camera.”

Nandita admits that Om still finds it frustrating at times when mainstream Hindi film directors do not do their homework. “Given his cinematic roots, he resisted the lure of commercial Hindi cinema for several years. But he couldn’t live with just bread forever. He needed butter and jam too. Today, he either opts for a film with a powerful script that gives him a challenging role or he takes on films that are brainless but fetch him money. But he does both kinds of films with equal honesty,” she says.

And that’s always been Om Puri’s forte: creative integrity. In the ultimate analysis, Nandita C. Puri’s book on his life and times reflects just that – and more.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Newsvine

del.icio.us

Want to give feedback on this article

Name Email Comment on this article (Not more than 250 character) Security Image Write the characters in the Security Image in the box, ( Case Sensitive )

Disclaimer

The views expressed here are strictly personal and civilsocietyonline.com does not necessarily subscribe to them. We shall endeavour to upload/publish as many of the comments that are submitted as possible within a reasonable span of time, but we do not guarantee that all comments that are submitted will be uploaded/published. Messages that harass, abuse or threaten other members; have obscene, unlawful, defamatory, libellous, hateful, or otherwise objectionable content; or have spam, commercial or advertising content or links are liable to be removed by the editors. We also reserve the right to edit the comments that do get published. Please do not post any private information unless you want it to be available publicly.