Om Puri was regarded as one of the finest actors in world cinema. However, his personal life was filled with controversies. The biggest of them was when his ex-wife Nandita Puri, also the author of his biography–Unlikely Hero: Om Puri–disclosed his alleged sexual encounters with his house helps Shanti and Laxmi when he was a teenager, allegedly without the actor’s consent. The shocking revelation was all over the news in 2009 upon the book’s release, reportedly becoming the reason of their separation.
Now, after almost 15 years, his ex-wife Nandita addressed the controversy and contrary to reports, claimed, her husband was not upset. In an interview with Siddharth Kannan, Nandita said, “No, he was not upset.”
She explained, “When I was interviewing him, my son was very small, I said, ‘You are talking so openly about the maid episode, it wouldn’t be nice.’ He said, ‘why? Why are you being such a hypocrite? I was not married, I was not in a relationship, why can’t I mention that I did have a little affair with the working class person.’ I said, ‘Yeah, but I also have a son’ and he said, ‘No, he has to know the truth.'”
She then claimed that her husband was upset with how the media treated the news. She said, “What he was upset with was the way it was pulled out. He said, ‘That is not the highlight of my life. The highlight of my life is my career, my childhood, my struggle, but this, I wanted mentioned.'” She further claimed, she didn’t put this information out without his permission.
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However, previously, in an interview with Times Entertainment, Om Puri, who was in Chandigarh at that time, claimed he didn’t read even a single page of the manuscript. He said, “I don’t care if she is my wife, I won’t let her get away with it.”
He further shared he was shocked by her revelations and called it “cheap.” The actor accused his wife of reducing a very important and sacred part of his life to cheap and lurid gossip, claiming he had shared these dark secrets with her as all husbands do. “How was I to know she would use the incident from my life to sell her book?”
The actor expressed his disappointment in the way his relationship was being shown. “My relationship with this wonderful woman was a homage to her loyalty for looking after me unconditionally”, said the actor. The actor further claimed there was so much more to his life, like his childhood and struggling period when he was in FTTI, then why his sexual encounters were made the focus points.
While there are no reports of the actor denying the claims of his sexual encounters, he did express his anger after the book’s release. Om Puri and Nandita Puri parted ways in 2013. They have a son Ishaan. In 2017, Om Puri passed away at 66.
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