AUTOBIOGRAPHY
The art of Amrish Puri
V. GANGADHAR
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Vignettes of Indian theatre and cinema.
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The Act of Life; Amrish Puri with Jyoti Sabharwal, Stellar Publishers Pvt. Ltd., Rs. 595.
IS Amrish Puri really dead? Switch on any TV movie channel, day or night and he is there plotting and getting bashed up by the hero. And you wonder how, in most of his films, he had managed to outshine the chocolate-faced hero. The hero may get the girl but Puri gets our accolades.
If you want to know how this happened time and again, read this massive memoir, a treatise on stage and screen acting embellished with anecdotes. The book has a strong personal element, but what makes it different is the scientific, methodical and unbiased approach.
No fluke
Puri's success was no fluke. If theatre giants like Alkazi, Satya Dev Dubey and Girish Karnad sought him; it was because his talent, dedication and hard work dazzled them. His first guru, Alkazi, observed, "Amrish Puri is the finest student in the class. As a person and as a man of the theatre, he is an example of the type of the individual needed to the Indian theatre today." In that golden age of Hindi theatre and Bombay's Theatre Unit, Puri had major roles in "Andha Yug" (where he could not blink his eyes for 17 minutes in the opening scene), "Aadhe Adhure", "Yayati", "Hayavadan" (Indira Gandhi came for just 30 minutes but sat through to the end), "Pagla Ghoda" and "Sakharam Binder". Association with Vijay Tendulkar and Badal Sircar honed his skills.
The book is lit up with interesting tips to theatre lovers. How does an actor create the necessary emotion for a difficult scene? After doing a brilliant suicide scene, an actor explained he was scared of cold showers and, just before the suicide scene, imagined he was under a cold shower! While performing as Sakharam Binder, Puri found himself becoming short-tempered and using foul language.
How did such a brilliant actor start as a nobody in Hindi films? The starting age of 40 years and harsh features put paid to starry plans. A bit role in "Prem Pujari" made his theatre friends ask, "Amrish, how could they do this to you"? But soon Shyam Benegal ("Nishant", "Manthan", "Bhumika", "Suraj ka Saatvan Ghoda") and the ability to carry the spontaneity of theatre into cinema pushed Puri to the top character actor category.
With films like "Mr. India" and "Nagina" and international appearances in "Gandhi" and "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom", Amrish Puri commanded the same price as the top heroes and had roles specifically written for him.
Fascinating analysis
In a fascinating analysis of the screen villain, Puri talks about the merits of fellow villains like Jeevan, Amjad, traditional ones like Kanhaiyalal and explains that unlike the stars, villains need not remain eternally young nor beautified. It was all the more important for them to hold the film together. The book has interesting sketches of fellow actors. Dilip Kumar is peerless, Amitabh Bachchan the most professional and Moti Lal absolutely natural. Nutan once told Puri, "I just do the role as I feel it" and he followed that piece of advice.
Gossip is just a small part of the book. The Act of Life comes from the heart; one can condone the Punjabi English. But it is an important work on the Indian stage and cinema and the excellent photographs are additional plus points.
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