Om, my friend: Naseeruddin Shah's tribute to the late Om Puri on his 75th birth anniversary

It would probably surprise some people to learn that Om Puri was one of the funniest people I have ever known. The scorching performances in ‘Aakrosh’ and ‘Ardh Satya’, which came from a long withheld pain and anger, weren’t the only things within him. The comic capers in ‘Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro’ (JBDY) and ‘Hera Pheri’ emerged from a withheld sense of mischief and a wicked sense of humour. Both kinds of performances came from who he really was. My children called him Om Papa. The only one funnier than him was his father who, familiar with the geography of Prithvi Theatre, one day during a show came in from the backstage area with two friends and seated himself in the audience!

Om would have turned 75 sometime now and I often wonder what he would have been like. A crotchety old crone turned cynical by life, or would he have recovered the generosity, the gentleness, the consideration for others, the zest for life and discovery he once had? Impossible to say. But it is a fact that his interest in his work (and probably in his life too) had seriously depleted. It was saddening to see how the indulgences of fame and affluence had begun to show their effect plainly even before he went away. Om, nevertheless, is someone to whom I owe immense gratitude for unwittingly showing me the way to work.

At the audition for admission to the National School of Drama (NSD) in 1970, while awaiting my turn, I listened to the actor in there before me delivering a piece in Punjabi, a language I didn’t understand too well then. But if steel wrapped in silk had a voice, this was it — both metallic and grainy and suffused with pain, rising sonorously or dropping to a murmur, each word pregnant with meaning. I had never heard speech delivery of this quality. The man with that voice, having done his bit, appeared shortly — a wiry, athletic physique, a pock-marked face, clothes that looked very worn, chappals on his feet — the picture of humility, while I with my Shammi Kapoor hairdo, Beatle boots and jeans sauntered in.

To cut a long story short, we both succeeded in impressing the selection committee. The School then had no hostel; the students had to fend for themselves. The girls lodged in a college hostel nearby, the boys had to find PG accommodation. Luckily for me, I got a comfy room at a walking distance from the NSD in the bungalow of an ex-MP who happened to be a friend of my father. I wondered where the man with the voice was staying. I was to find out shortly.

I was certain he’d be there on the first morning of the academic year and sure enough he was, along with a friend of his from Patiala. Their names: Om Puri and Rajendra Jaspal. Jaspal was sturdy but somewhat rotund and good looking in a rustic Punjabi way, Om was as lean as a scythe, but his face was already a landscape.

MK Raina, Jaspal and Puri were the first three to befriend me at the NSD. While Raina provided me free-of-charge private tuitions on theatre, literature, art, all while walking around Connaught Place, Jaspal and Puri were two I could share my dreams with. Jaspal was living opposite Old Delhi station with an uncle who was a guard there and, evidently, Om was living there too. So when I was invited to dinner by the two of them one day, I delightedly accepted imagining a hearty Punjabi meal in the offing.

I arrived fully expecting the aroma of home-made butter chicken to greet me. Jaspal was away and Om, who it turned out was going to cook, took me to where he was staying — a corner of the gallery outside the flat, open to the seasons and the noise, confusion and pollution of a typical Indian railway station. There was a charpai, a bookrack, a few clothes hanging on a nail in the wall and a paraffin stove on which something was cooking. On the menu was egg curry and rice and when Jaspal joined us, we partook of it. This was the day I realised that the secret ingredient in good food is affection.

Later, watching Om’s career go from bit parts in ‘Bhumika’, ‘Godhuli’ and ‘Paar’ to setting the screen on fire in ‘Aakrosh’, starting a theatre company, then hitting pay-dirt with ‘Ardh Satya’ and ‘City of Joy’, then starring in international productions, even sharing a smoke with Jack Nicholson, I could not help recalling that evening of the best egg curry I’ve ever had and marvelling at the magic realism of Om Puri’s journey.

As a student, Om was quiet, unassuming, industrious, humble — the seeker; I was arrogant, brash and overconfident — the attention hound. He would invariably be studying his script after rehearsal while I would take off to see a movie or just loiter around dreaming. The time at NSD went by in a flash for me but for him, it was a painful time of bettering himself. And it was only at the end of the three years — with “…when the time arrived, in the naked dawn only a few survived” ringing in my head — that I did an assessment of the two of us.

Om’s shy persona had been shed along the way, his voice had acquired a larger range, his once stiff body had gained muscular flexibility and expressiveness, and he always empathised deeply with every character he played. He had been able to find depth even in the walk-on parts he played earlier, but now he was playing leads and radiating confidence.

I, on the other hand, was still the same old show-off I used to be in college; I hadn’t progressed an inch whereas Om the sapling had turned into a massive oak. It was a bitter pill but I had to swallow it and there is no one I need to thank more than Om, following whose example, a slow growth of my own finally began.

To say that his death was a big loss and I miss him would be as obvious as it can get. I feel pissed at him for dying, he should have looked after himself. I treasured his company and he was someone who for a long while I looked up to. He had much more to give, if only he’d had the ability to know what to do when a bad hand was dealt to him by life.

For all his grit and integrity and ‘salt of the earth’ simplicity, he was a stranger in tinsel town but kept trying to fit in. I hope he’s in a happier place now.

“Laazim tha ki dekho mera

rasta koi din aur

Tanhaa gaye kyun, ab raho

tanhaa koi din aur”