Seema Kapoor, the first wife of late actor Om Puri, recently opened up about the heartbreak she endured during their marriage. She revealed that their relationship began to fall apart when Om became involved with another woman while she was pregnant. Unable to bear the betrayal, Seema walked away. Tragically, their child didn’t survive. She also shared that Om had once sent her Rs 25,000 through his secretary as a kind of compensation but she refused to accept it.
In a candid interview, Seema spoke about how Om met Nandita while shooting for City of Joy. Things had been smooth between them initially, but the affair changed everything. Reflecting on that time, she said, “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.”
She realized how serious he was about wanting a divorce just by the way he spoke. Returning to Mumbai, she tried to act like everything was normal, but after Om left for a shoot, she found love letters among his things. “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 shared.
Seema explained that she wasn’t someone who liked to fight, but now believes that Om may have been looking for a way out of their marriage. “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 and wanted to take Om to court. Seema eventually received Rs 6 lakh in alimony, but she couldn’t bring herself to accept the Rs 25,000 Om sent after the loss of their baby. “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,” she said.
Years later, as Om Puri neared the end of his life, he called Seema to apologise.
