<b>Sunil Sethi:</b> The torments of Om Puri

Om Puri's quiet and credulous charm could be disarming

Here is the 34-year-old Om Puri talking to me in 1984: “I never felt let down or bitter because I never lost perspective on my life. Relax, I used to tell myself at especially difficult moments, what would you be doing if you weren’t here? You would have ended up being a clerk somewhere. There was no terrible anticlimax in my life because I built no castles in the air. It made everything flow easy and even.”

It’s a long damp afternoon and we’re in a hotel room in Delhi. The actor’s accolades are piling up in his landmark films