Remember Om Puri on his birth anniversary
The year was 2016. It was the month of July. I was leaving the Sangeet Natak Academy in Delhi when the phone rang. I just started the car. I stopped. Flashed on the phone screen – Om Puri. I immediately picked up the phone. From there came the familiar voice of Om Puri – “If you want, you can do the interview now. I am going to the studio for dubbing and it will take me more than an hour to reach there. That’s all the time you need, right? I said – yes of course Om Ji, I wanted to catch him for an interview for the last few days. I also told him that I will give the interview only when he has at least an hour to spare.
Well, I put the car back in the parking lot and sat in the car and the interview started. By the way, we were talking on phone but in that whole conversation it didn’t seem like Omji was in Mumbai and I was in Delhi. He used to make sketches from his conversations. Talking to him was like watching a cinema. No idea when the one hour conversation turned into an hour and a half. Omji reached the studio but kept talking. A few months had passed since this conversation when I was on a family trip to Jaisalmer. There was news of his absence. His voice is still alive in my ears today. It was a long interview but I am sharing some parts of it here.
Om Puri’s childhood was full of struggles
My first question was about Om Puri’s childhood. He started saying – I remember the first thing from childhood or I remember the first scene of my house. At that time I was about two and a half years old. I remember a bed on which both my hands were tied because I had smallpox. This was done so that I wouldn’t get scratched, as scratching would cause scarring. Then a few days later I caught a baby parrot. I built a brick house for him. I used to feed him.
One morning when I went to see him, I found that the dogs had torn down his brick house and he was buried inside it and died. I was very hurt, very hurt… I cried a lot. After that I took the parrot and buried it. I dug the soil well and pressed it in. During that time I became friends with a boy. His father was a railway employee, who worked as a cleaner. My mother was not very educated, she only knew how to read the Gita. He practiced untouchability.
Her condition was such that if she was going out of the house and a cat crossed her path, she would not be able to go anywhere. If she was going from home to the market and was splashed with water, she would assume that it must be sewage splash. Then she would return home. She bathed and cleaned the Dhoti. Now because of her nature, as soon as she saw me playing with my friend, she would grab me and take me home and give me a bath immediately.
While Om Puri’s father was in jail
In response to a question about his childhood, Om Puri says – “My father used to work in a railway store. 15-20 bags of cement were stolen from that store. The police arrested my father on charges of theft. The railway people made us evacuate the house. My mother said a million times that I have two small children, where will they go… but the railway people did not listen to a single word. After this bad times started for my mother and all of us. After my father went to jail, the railway people were constantly pressuring us to vacate the house. My mother always tried to find relief.
The railway people knew that my mother was very much a follower of untouchability. He took advantage of this habit of his mother. One day, railway sweepers came to my house with a lot of garbage in a basket. It also had faeces. He threatened the mother that if she did not vacate the house, he would throw all the garbage in front of the house. My mother left and vacated the house. After this he somehow arranged a small room.
My mother put me at a tea stall, thinking that at least I would get food there. As I was young, the shopkeeper showed me the water tank and told me that my job was only to wash the tea glasses. When I was young, crossing the road to deliver tea was dangerous. The shop owner only gave me the job of washing glasses, thinking what would happen if I were hit by a car somewhere.”
Early days of National School of Drama
Following Om Puri’s childhood struggles, I take him back to his acting days. He also elaborated that story – “Despite all the challenges, the National School of Drama was running in my mind. I applied for admission there and got selected. After which I left the job. Many people consoled me when I left the government job. I used to get 200 rupees in NSD, in which I managed everything cut to cut. Studied there for three years, but saw darkness after coming out.
I saw that there were people like Rajendra Nath, Om Shivpuri, Shyamanand Jalan who did theater regularly, but their livelihood was from somewhere else. All were working. Instead I wanted to be an actor. Naseeruddin Shah was my classmate. I had no misgivings about myself. It was the era of people like Basu Chatterjee, Basu Bhattacharya, Shyam Benegal, Mrinal Sen and I knew that commercial cinema would not accept me, my thin face was scarred with smallpox. I am not fond of Mercedes, I am not fond of bungalows.
Earlier, art films were often shown abroad, which made people travel around the world but art films cannot buy a house. I got 5000 rupees for ‘Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron’, 9000 rupees for ‘Aakrosh’ and 25000 rupees for ‘Ardha Satya’, meaning I couldn’t buy a house with it, so I deliberately did commercial films as well. Later one day I told Amitabh Bachchan that it’s good that you didn’t tell half truth, he started laughing.
