You’re barely 21 years old and you hear in your first interview: ‘You can’t do this for the rest of your life, get out and find another path,’ so what do you do?
This is exactly what happened to Amrish Puri, who immortalized the famous villain ‘Mogibmu Khush Hua,’ ‘Ja Simran Ji Ley Apni Zindagi’ and many such dialogues. He got the reputation as a villain but he fought the battle of life like a hero and won.
A glimpse of his courage and dedication can be found in a Google Doodle tribute on 22 June 2019, with the caption, ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again, you will become an Indian film. The actor can be like Amrish Puri.’
After her first screen test in 1953, filmmaker Devendra Goyal rejected her because of her face and voice. Goyal thinks the young man’s voice is ‘shrill’ and his face ‘expressionless’. He bluntly advised Amrish Puri: ‘Find another job, don’t waste time on films.’
After grinding shoes at various studios in Bombay, Amrish Puri got a job at the Employees State Insurance Corporation. Along with this he also joined All India Radio.
All India Radio’s dramas and other programs were running for free. The small amount of money that was received, was spent on tea and cigarettes, but the result of those days was lip and accent trimming and acting training, which served him throughout his life.
In 1962, he enrolled in Ibrahim Al-Qazi’s Drama Academy. Al-Qazi’s name comes among the top theater teachers in India. If you want to gauge the greatness of Al-Qazi Sahib, listen to any interview with Naseeruddin Shah, one of his best students.
In an interview, Amrish Puri says: ‘Then I felt that if I can’t act in films, then what happened, theater is not, the passion for acting is, even if it is fulfilled through theatre, I am happy.’
Al-Qazi gave him the lead role in Arthur Miller’s famous play ‘A View from the Bridge’. Amrish Puri, who played a very brief role in the 1956 film ‘Bhai Bhai’, got an opportunity to act in a film again in 1970 after 14 years.
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The film was Dev Anand’s ‘Prem Pujari’. This was his second innings after making a name for himself in theatre. It started with a single double. He had to spend several more years to show his full potential.
In the 70s, he acted in more than 30 films. Although all these were minor characters, they made their place through their big eyes and unique voice. He was usually one of the villain’s friends or as a village landlord.
Three decades after his debut film, Amrish Puri got the role, which immortalized him as one of the scariest and most successful villains in the history of Indian cinema. It was the 1987 Shikhar Kapur film ‘Mr India’.
After Sholay’s Gabbar Singh, the first Indian villain that comes to mind is none other than Mugimbo. The creator of both was Saleem Javed.
Interestingly, he was not the first choice for the role of ‘Mugembo’. According to Amrish Puri, when he was contacted, 60% of the film had been shot. I didn’t like it. I thought ‘have they gone and missed me?’
Regarding the role of ‘Mugambo’, he says that he was given complete freedom by director Shekhar Kapur to carve out the role as he saw fit. The role was that of an attacker who is as ruthless as Hitler. We thought his identity should be ambiguous, so chose the name Mugembo, which does not make the tribe clear.
Amrish Puri’s children say that when our friends used to come home, they were scared to see their father. It took time to convince them that in ordinary life he was a kind and sophisticated person.
He says: ‘There was a big set in the Raj Kapoor studio. I did not see the sun for fifteen or twenty days because Mugembo stayed inside his shelter and died there.’
Anupam Kher says in an interview: ‘I was given the role of Mogembo before Amrish Puri in Mr. India, but after two or three months the filmmakers dropped me. Usually, an actor feels bad when he gets fired after being cast in the film, but when I saw Amrish Puri as Mugumbo in Mr. India, I felt that the makers of the film had taken a great decision.’
Amrish Puri, who has done more than 450 films in his career, has worked in Hindi, Punjabi, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada as well as in English.
He got world fame when in 1984 he played an important role in the famous Hollywood director Steven Spielberg’s movie ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’. Spielberg was very impressed with his work.
A great hero is incomplete without a villain. Sometimes we think of the character of the villain as a reflection of his real life. According to Amrish Puri’s children, when their friends would come to their house, they would get scared seeing Amrish. It took time to convince him that in ordinary life he was a kind and sophisticated person.
A sophisticated person in real life, a hideous movie villain and a tireless warrior fighting the battle of life like a hero, Amrish Puri, whose life is full of ups and downs like a movie.
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