Bollywood’s veteran star Om Puri needs no introduction. Though he left the mortal world in 2017, his work and his words keep him alive in millions of hearts. Details about him and his life’s work were also documented in his autobiography ‘Unlikely Hero: Om Puri.’ However, there are also various controversies surrounding the book, as it brought many shocking revelations.In the book, there are reported incidents that talk about the late actor’s alleged sexual encounter with his maid. Reportedly this content came out without Om Puri’s consent.
Recently, Nandita Puri, the wife of the late star spoke about the controversial content and the impact it had. While speaking to Siddharth Kannan, she mentioned that details of Puri’s private life were altered, and they were nothing but an attempt at revenge.
According to Nandita, Om Puri wanted her to write a book on him. There were no secretes between the two and he gave her anecdotes of his life on audio record. However, there was another person who wanted to write an autobiography of Puri. She was the ex-wife of Om’s colleague, and that is exactly where things took an ugly turn.
Speaking about the alleged distasteful account of Puri’s private life, Nandita said, “No, these claims are false and doctored. I don’t believe in Wikipedia. The idea of writing a book came when I met him. He said, ‘You must write about me. My childhood is like Charlie Chaplin.’ His tough childhood inspired me to write not just about Om Puri, but the whole cinema movement and the people he worked with. It took me 16-17 years to write the book, despite several others wanting to write his biography.”
She further said, “Then I came to know that there was someone else who wants to write the book. So, she was quite upset and she told Om about it as her ex-husband was Om’s colleague. Om said, ‘I cannot say no to Nandita.”
Om Puri asked both of them to write the book and said whoever had a better script, that will go for the next step. “Her cousin was a yellow journalist gossip film writer. He has been banned from the entire Indian publications. The wanted to teach me a lesson. So, Om felt bad about the whole thing. My publisher Roli Books and Tehelka office were on the same building. So, they would share the snippets. So, these guys got the snippets from there and said this is a bad book and claimed that the script wasn’t shown to Om Puri.” said Nandita.
She recalled Om Puri didn’t care much about the whole matter. However, Nandita was upset that things were blown out of proportion.
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