Mumbai: Om Prakash Puri, Padma Shri, an actor's actor who made a special place in our hearts and cinemas across the world with the sheer dint of his talent, passed away in Mumbai on Friday. He was 66.
In the 1980 Aakrosh, written by Marathi playwright Vijay Tendulkar, Om Puri played farmer Lahanya Bhiku, a victim of the oppressive judicial system. Most of Om Puri’s dialogues are only during flashbacks in the film. But the film ends in the present, with a gut-wrenching scream. Hear it. It’s Om Puri intense. It will chill your bones.
Or just listen to Om Puri reciting Dilip Chitre’s poem, Ardh Satya, as Smita Patil looks on, with a mix of love, admiration and a tinge of fear at his intensity. It got him the National Indian Film Award for Best Actor.
Puri made his debut in the mid-1970s before going on to star in a number of major Hindi hits as well as in some Pakistani and regional movies. Known first for his role in edgy art house movies, he later acted in major commercial and Hollywood hits, featuring alongside the likes of Jack Nicholson, Tom Hanks and Patrick Swayze.
Puri also appeared in a number of British films, notably Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, and the 1999 Bafta-winning comedy East is East as a fish-and-chip shop owner who struggles to get his British family to follow the strict Pakistani customs he is used to.
He was sometimes in the headlines for the wrong reasons as well, enduring an acrimonious and well-publicised split from his wife Nandita Puri.
In October last year he was accused of insulting Indian soldiers shortly after 19 were killed in the attack on the Army base in Uri, when he asked, “Who had asked the soldiers to join the Army?”
His biography — Om Puri: Unlikely Hero (2009), was authored by his estranged wife Nandita Puri. The book stirred a controversy with Puri expressing displeasure over some of the references from his personal life. It also led to his split with Nandita.
