Om with wife Nandita at Crossword on Friday. Picture by Pabitra Das

It?s his wife?s book-reading session, but book lovers are running after him. Om Puri seems a trifle embarrassed by the spotlight firmly focussed on him. But once he starts talking, there?s no doubting who tops his hate list: the Mumbai film-maker.

?I am being offered rubbish and I am doing all rubbish,? he says, pauses and adds: ?No, there is one good film I am doing. Farhan Akhtar?s Don.?

The angry man of Ardh Satya seems to be fuming inside the actor now on the other side of 50. After 30 years in the film industry, lack of quality roles irks the man who has found favour with the best names in Indian film-making ? from Satyajit Ray to Govind Nihalani to Shyam Benegal.

?There are no challenging roles for character actors, unless you are a star and that too in the industry sense. We have proved ourselves. Only if there are small-budget films they come to me and Naseer? There is also nothing significant happening on TV. Only the saas bahu serials. I want to do something like Kakkaji Kahin,? says Puri, after reading out extracts from wife Nandita C. Puri?s collection of short stories, Nine On Nine, at Crossword on Friday evening. The couple was in town with son Ishaan.

?The demarcation between off-beat and commercial films does not exist anymore. Good film-makers like Raj Kumar Santoshi, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Prakash Jha are making films on socially relevant stories but with stars and songs and dance. In terms of form, they are still in the Sixties? One went to the NSD and FTII hoping to do films all life long. But I am very disappointed,? he adds.

As a doting husband, Puri too took the star route, roping in Amitabh Bachchan to read out extracts from Nine On Nine at a Mumbai bookstore to boost his journalist wife?s foray into fiction. Puri had met the Calcutta-born Nandita on the sets of The City of Joy (picture left) in town some 15 years ago. ?I was freelancing for The Telegraph then and had gone to interview Om,? laughs Nandita, who has also recently debuted as a scriptwriter ? the film Dil Leke Dekho is being produced by Shatrughan Sinha?s wife Poonam and stars Jackie Shroff wth Koel Purie.

?I had written the script in English and it was meant to be a low-budget film, but the producers wanted to go big and so I had to make it Hindi-English,? she says. As far as her writing is concerned, Nandita says her husband is never the first one to see the first draft. ?I let him read my stories only when they were finished and the book was ready for release,? she smiles.