Om Puri to Sergey Brin: The scarlet letter always goes to the woman

"Even as his estranged wife heaps allegations of domestic violence on him, Om Puri quietly flew away to South of France on Saturday evening," notes the gossip column in the Bangalore Mirror, touting the actor's latest Hollywood stint, "It is a prestigious project for the actor, who has had a tough run of luck lately, both with his professional and personal life… An unfortunate turn to the story of one of our finest actors."Poor, poor Om Puri. A "beleaguered actor" forced to endure "drama and trauma" at the hands of "his aggrieved wife," as an IANS report puts it. Thus is the theme of the media coverage of Om's marital troubles, which has been sympathetic to a fault.No doubt, his current wife's erratic and attention-seeking behavior is one reason for this generous pass. It is difficult to take her charges seriously given her past antics. But Om Puri is not exactly an innocent here. He has consistently made strange and often unethical choices that have made his personal life a public spectacle.In the media narrative, Om's marital troubles were caused by Nandita's decision to reveal intimate details about his personal life in her biography, "Unlikely Hero: The Story of Om Puri." But, as Bharati Pradhan points out in The Telegraph, Om worked his biggest Bollywood connections to ensure a star-studded guest list at its launch:But Om and all his buddies had been an enthusiastic part of her glittering book release four years ago at a five-star hotel in central Mumbai. Om's Film Institute friend, Tom Alter, had played emcee, showering orgasmic and wildly exaggerated praise on Nandita's writing skills all through the evening. It was for Om's sake that rare bird Naseeruddin Shah had turned up at the function and for Om again that the legendary Amitabh Bachchan had agreed to be the chief guest.It was an odd way to express disapproval of one's spouse. And, once up on stage, Om himself put on an embarrassing display, revealing intimate details, including the fact that he'd filed a false case of adultery against his first wife, Seema, in order to marry Nandita -- who he accused of being "stuck to him like Fevicol" after their first meeting. Yes, bad Nandita for making poor Om do all these mean things to his wife.In the months after, Om publicly played the women in his life off each other, remarking in one interview, “I want to spend my old age with Seemaji. I’ve done her wrong in the past. I need to make amends.”As it turns out, Seemaji is not as enthusiastic, despite rumours of their new "closeness."[caption id="attachment_1081597" align="alignleft" width="380"] Om Puri had earlier sought bail after being accused of domestic violence. PTI[/caption]Asked to respond to Om's declaration in a rare interview with Mumbai Mirror, she politely said, "That makes me feel good. But I wouldn't like to stay with him."Seema was far more blunt, however, when revealing the details of her divorce:We were very serious about our relationship and after dating for almost a decade, we finally tied the knot in 1990. But my marital bliss was short-lived. Nandita stormed into Om's life when our marriage was just about a year old. She had met him in Kolkata for an interview, and the next thing I knew was that she was staying with him in his hotel room. Initially, I thought it was a fling. But I was wrong. It did not fizzle out. I had lost my father three months before my marriage. My mother used to feel very lonely. And I would visit her in Jhalawar (Rajasthan) quite often. In my absence, Nandita used to drop in and stay with Om. I found her letters and I even found her undergarments in Om's cupboard. At one point, I was so disturbed that I went away to stay with my mother. I was pregnant and I didn't want all this to have an effect on my child. But, I was so traumatised that I eventually lost the baby.Later in the interview, she adds a final, damning detail: "When I lost my baby, [Nandita] was on a pre-marriage honeymoon with Om in Nepal."Or to put it more accurately: When Seema lost their baby, Om was "on a pre-marriage honeymoon" with another woman -- soon after which he filed false charges of adultery against his wife.In other words, Om Puri is not exactly great husband material. Yet in the midst of this latest melodrama, media stories have strained to air-brush the less savoury aspects of his behaviour. An India Today profile titled "The Om Puri Story" offers this sanitised version of the same break-up:Seema and Om knew each other for 11 years, since 1979. She lived in Delhi and Om in Mumbai. She had even proposed to him but he had told her, "I admire you, I'm fond of you but I'm involved with another girl". She was heartbroken. Eventually, the two got married in 1990. But they remained together only for a year. In an interview to Filmfare a while ago Om said, "She was very young, 10 years younger to me. She was not outspoken, she couldn't convey what she felt uncomfortable about. A misunderstanding developed. It was unfortunate that we separated.Then journalist Nandita Puri came into Om's life. She had gone to interview him during the filming of Roland Joffe's City of Joy in Kolkata in 1993. They hit it off and got married a few years later.It's an astoundingly inaccurate account of events -- even by Om's own admission. What is noteworthy here is not Om's poor moral judgement, or Nandita's unseemly behaviour, or Seema's capacity for forgiveness. These are human beings, some more flawed than others. The real issue is the media's stake in portraying Om as an innocent victim. Why dub Nandita as the unstable harridan, while giving Om a pass for far more grievous misconduct? The irony is that far more eyebrows were raised at his youthful affair with a maid than the circumstances of his divorce.Messy, even ugly, celebrity scandals are par for the course. But in most such cases, it is the woman who receives greater scrutiny and blame. Take, for instance, the big breakup making headlines on the other side of the world. The news of the end of Google honcho Sergey Brin's marriage was immediately followed by news of his current relationship with a young Google marketing executive, Amanda Rosenberg.There is no evidence that Brin pulled an Om on his wife, yet Rosenberg is under vicious attack as a home-breaker. A number of headlines refer to her as "the mistress," trying to imply by innuendo what is not borne out by fact. Others still accused her of sleeping her way to the top.No one has a bad word to say about Brin, however, or his unwise decision to rebound with an office romance at a time when his company is at a delicate stage of transition.Whether in the khap panchayat or the morning tabloid, the scarlet letter always goes to the woman.