Nana Patekar (1951-2026): Tributes to a Firebrand Actor of Indian Cinema!

Someone laments inconsolably, ‘It’s no time to go! He had so many things to do!’ which is quite a natural reaction in matters concerning death, irrespective of the age or the state of health or the circumstances surrounding the person. The pain is always there, only the intensity might vary depending on how close to heart the person is to us, personally or otherwise. No doubt, the personal loss is the most intense one in any tragedy, often leaving the bereaved unable to handle the pain. The screen icons or the celebrities become very close to us over the years even though we never meet him/her at a personal level and thus their passing-away leaves us grieving and in shock. The loss of Nana Patekar is a very intensely shocking pain to me at a personal level, although I never knew or met him personally; his screen images and performances endeared him to me over the decades till I last saw him in Houseful5 movie just months before. Born as Vishwanath Patekar in Maharashtra, Nana Patekar passed away suddenly of a massive cardiac arrest early this morning in Goa and he could not be saved despite the best efforts of the doctors. A three-doctor panel has been constituted to carry out the autopsy. He died at 75, but as we mentioned before age is no consolation nor the auspicious Pitru Paksha demise nor the seemingly painless going-away, and only more regret that he was still very fit likeable and ever ready for new roles/jobs/philanthropy and so on. People keep on dying in the thirties or forties or the fifties or the sixties all around us and we have absolutely no control over the ways of death; we can only feel the pain, grieve, at times inconsolably.

In one of his significant early Hindi films Ankush (1986) in which Nana Patekar played the role of an unemployed youth in a group of four I immediately identified with him, myself being in the prime of youth with an idealistic bent of mind in the eighties, and was greatly influenced by the film. The director of the film N Chandra made another film Pratighaat the very next year giving Nana another significant role. Both of the low-budget movies based on social issues were huge hits and Nana Patekar came to stay, although the film Gaman (1978) directed by Muzaffar Ali had already introduced the actor. In 1984 the vigilante movie Aaj Ki Awaz directed by Ravi Chopra established the versatile actor as a sinister villain in the role of an underworld crime lord. He continued to act in Marathi films in the meantime. I adored from the beginning his unique-styled but natural acting with a novel rapid-fire dialogue delivery and also his deadpan drawl at times, particularly in his suave villainous and comic roles. Every role he plays exudes raw power and girth or mirth as the case may be, always unstoppable. There could be no role on earth that he couldn’t have done justice to.

From the late eighties to the nineties Nana Patekar never ceased to entertain and influence us. His unforgettable role of an unconventional villain in Parinda (1989) that got him his first National Award for the Best Supporting Actor, directed by Vidhu Vinod Chopra, to his own directorial venture Prahaar (1991) where Nana played the role of an Army officer for which he had undergone a three-year infantry training course. In fact, in 1988 he joined the Indian Territorial Army as a captain and rose to the rank of a lieutenant colonel in the later years. The powerful actor had a string of superhits in those years, namely Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman (1992) where he shone in a comic role, Tiranga (1993), Krantiveer (1994) for which he got his second National Award for Best Actor and the epochal Agni Sakshi (1996) where he played a quietly ferocious obsessive husband that got him his third National Award for the Best Supporting Actor. Mehul Kumar's action-thriller Kohram (1999) featured Nana Patekar with Amitabh Bachchan--the only movie of the two great stars together. 

The new millennium did not lessen his performances in any way and he thrived in many powerful roles in many commercially successful movies. Among the most prominent movies are Shimit Amin’s Ab Tak Chhappan (2004) where he played a ruthless encounter cop, Prakash Jha’s Apaharan (2005) with Ajay Devgn, Milan Luthria’s Taxi No 9211 with John Abraham and Prakash Jha’s Raajneeti (2010) with Ajay Devgn and Ranbir Kapoor. The legendary character actor’s comic performances then gained widespread mass popularity through movies Welcome (2007) and Welcome Back (2015) with Anil Kapoor among others. Four Filmfare Awards came his way among numerous nominations. He was also awarded Padma Shri in 2013. The actor also won several awards for his Marathi films including for Natsamrat in 2017. Nana Vishwanath Patekar was active in films and in social activities till his last breath today.

Nana Patekar has been known for his simplicity and down-to-earth nature; while among the most prominent stars of Bollywood for decades he lived away from the world of glamour and sleaze and worked tirelessly on his social charity projects. He particularly felt for the farmers in distress in Maharashtra and the flood victims in other states like Bihar too. His unique personality is not just limited to his reels, but also in real life—he is angry and brutally frank, he doesn’t know beating around the bushes and never hypocritical; he cries, laughs, he grieves, wholeheartedly and I always tend to find a kind of sadness in his countenance. I love his body language and dialogue delivery style so much that I always cherish the experience should any artiste happen to impersonate or mimic him on stage or on screen. I knew an artist in Mumbai who used to mimic Nana on stage and I used to request him to do it for me whenever and wherever we met, and he did oblige me on most occasions.

Nana Patekar will continue to live on the screens and in our hearts forever. The raw power of one of the most powerful actors of Indian Cinema cannot ever wither away. As his mortal remains are to be assigned to flames in Pune we join in the prayers for the eternal bliss of his noble soul. I salute the great artiste!