Seema Kapoor, the first wife of late actor Om Puri, reflected on their turbulent marriage, which fell apart after he got involved with another woman. Seema said that she was pregnant at the time, and after a point, the betrayal became too much for her to handle. She left, but their child didn’t survive. In an interview, she said that Om Puri sent her Rs 25,000 as compensation via a secretary, but she refused to accept the amount. She also recalled how unpleasant things became after he confessed to having fallen in love with the other woman, a journalist named Nandita, whom he’d go on to marry and have a son with.
In an interview with Siddharth Kannan, Seema recalled that Om met Nandita while working on the Hollywood film City of Joy. “Everything was going fine after our marriage, but that movie turned my life upside down… My good friend Renu Saluja, Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s first wife, knew about the affair. But she and Sudhir Mishra and everyone else chalked it down to a phase. They felt that he’d get back to normal after the film. I found out about the affair much later, when I was in Delhi. He called me up and told me that he was seeing someone else, and my friends said that he was just seeking attention.”
But Seema could tell from the tone of his voice that he wasn’t joking. He told her that he wanted a divorce, but she couldn’t believe her ears. “I returned to Mumbai, and everything felt normal. He left the city for a shoot soon afterwards, and while sifting through his stuff, I discovered love letters. I was shattered. I never wanted to divorce him, despite the affair. I wanted to mend things, because I was pregnant. He knew I was pregnant, but this was a source of insecurity for Nandita. She’d call him up in front of me,” she said.
Seema said that she was a non-confrontational person, but she understands now that Om was simply looking for an excuse to separate from her. He’d fight because this would give him the excuse he needed, in addition to feeling superior by having confessed his infidelities. “But things became overwhelming; Puri sahab would drink too much, and Nandita would make a scene. One night, I decided to leave. I was three months pregnant.” Her brother, actor Annu Kapoor, was furious about what had happened, and vowed to take Om Puri down in court. Seema received Rs 6 lakh from him as alimony, but turned down the Rs 25,000 that he sent after their child didn’t make it.
She said, “Forget consoling me. He sent Rs 25,000 via his secretary. I turned it down, and his secretary told me, ‘This ego is what is destroying you’. But what he thought was ego was just self-respect.” Seema said that she and Om Puri reconnected during his final years, when, out of the blue, he called her up and apologised to her for everything that he had done.
