Acclaimed actor Om Puri is enormously upset with his wife, journalistcolumnist Nandita for highlighting some of his most private sexual incidents to market her biography, Unlikely Hero: The Story Of Om Puri. A discernibly upset Om said, “I don’t care if she’s my wife. I won’t let her get away with it. I am in Chandigarh shooting for a film. On Monday I heard Nandita speaking about the biography she has written on me. I was shocked by her revelations. It was so cheap. She was talking about my sexual encounters as though those were my biggest achievements!”
Om’s main reason for being upset is Nandita’s revelation that he had sex with his maid Shanti at the age of 14. She has also exposed Om’s longstanding liaison with a woman named Laxmi with whom Om was sexually and emotionally involved.
Om is livid. “My wife has reduced a very important and sacred part of my life to cheap and lurid gossip. I had shared these dark secrets with my wife as all husbands do. If she chose to make them public at least she should’ve made sure to maintain a dignity about experiences that are a valuable part of my life. Has she forgotten that I have a standing in society and I’ve worked hard to achieve all that I have today? I won’t allow her to throw it all away for the sake of sensationalism.”
Om says that Laxmi was one of the most important women in his life. “This lady whom Nandita talks in such an undignified manner was Laxmi, who raised me and my brother’s orphaned children. My relationship with this wonderful woman was a homage to her loyalty for looking after me unconditionally.”
Om doesn’t deny he had sex with Laxmi. “But it was not a furtive and sleazy experience. It was beautiful. Why make such a tamasha out of these very sensitive moments? Mahatma Gandhi spoke of his experiences with sexuality in The Story of My Experiments With Truth. But was that all there was to his life? Why highlight these aspects when there’s so much more to me? Do you know, when I was a child, I was travelling by train with my destitute mother. The entire compartment collected money to feed us. That incident remains etched in my mind. I was working in a teashop when I was seven years old. When I came to the FTII, Pune I didn’t have a decent shirt to wear. I had to borrow one from Naseeruddin Shah. I had hoped when my life was chronicled it would be an inspirational story.”
Om says his wife insisted on writing his biography. “I was aware that another lady (Aparajita Krishna) was writing my biography. When Nandita expressed a desire to write about me I couldn’t stop her because she’s my wife but she has forgotten who she is,” added Om.
The actor complains that Nandita didn’t allow him to read the manuscript. “Not once did she let me read even one page of the manuscript. How was I to know how she would use the incidents from my life to sell her book?”
When we promised to be discreet in putting forward his anguish and humiliation, Om retorted, “Please don’t be discreet. Has she exercised any discretion in talking about my personal experiences? The final decision to put my life up as a tamasha was Nandita’s. I can’t forgive her.”
When we asked Nandita for her side of the story, she said, “This is all such a mistake. My book on my husband is a biography, not bl***y pornography. The book is about Om, the man and the actor. Om has all the human foibles, just like all of us. He had sex as an adolescent with his maid and then he had a long liaison with the other lady who was also a maid. This was his way of coming out of his other relationships and demolishing class differences. If Om has any objection to her being called a maid he’s just being unrealistic.”
So are his sexual experiences an integral part of the book? “They are,” admitted Nandita. “But that’s not all.” Apparently, the broadcast journalist who interviewed Nandita picked up excerpts from a weekly news magazine. “She called me on her show and for 20 minutes she spoke only about Om’s sexual escapades. When I thought she’d question me about other aspects of Om’s life in the book, the show was over. I was horrified. I was even more horrified when I saw the show,” added Nandita.
Yesterday morning, Nandita received a very angry call from Om who is in Chandigarh . “He was livid. The double escapades with the two maid servants has made Om feel he’ll be compared to Shiney Ahuja. Now my husband is angry, my publishers are upset and so am I,” said Nandita.
