Om Puri: The unlikely hero

Om Puri: 18 October 1950 - 6 January 2017

It was on a balmy evening in 1988 that I first came across this tall, lanky man with wide, red-rimmed eyes staring back at me from the television screen. He wasn’t saying a word and yet the fury emanating from his being, almost animalistic in nature, was palpable. I was five at that time, a tad young to understand the conflict that underlay his character, but that haunting image of Om Puri from Tamas seared itself in my conscience. In the ensuing years, powerful images from films such as Ardh Satya, Aakrosh, City of Joy and, of course, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro kept piling up as layers