Mukesh Khanna has added a precise on-set memory to the tributes for Nana Patekar, who died on October 8. The memory comes from Indra Kumar’s 1995 film Raja, and it turns on a scene Khanna stopped for two hours.
Khanna told IANS that he and Patekar were not party-going friends, but their paths crossed repeatedly, from the film Gang Gang to Raja. The later meeting became a lesson in how an actor’s argument can move a stalled set.
A two-hour refusal on set
During the shoot of Raja, which starred Madhuri Dixit and Sanjay Kapoor, Khanna objected to a sequence involving his character and his character’s sister. He felt the moment did not fit the Thakur he was playing, and he halted the shoot for two hours rather than perform it.
“No Thakur will let a stranger enter his sister’s room,” Khanna said, explaining the objection. Patekar eventually walked over and reframed the scene: “You are doing it for your sister.”
Character image, not plot convenience
Khanna said he had been protecting an image he had established for the character. The scene seemed out of step with that image at first, so Patekar’s reasoning mattered more than the production’s schedule. The note was aimed at the character’s motive rather than the camera.
The story is less about the delay than about the discipline: Khanna saw the Thakur as a fixed identity, and Patekar spoke to that identity instead of dismissing it.
Khanna added that the film’s climax later corrected the character’s image, and that Indra Kumar understood the character would not do a certain thing. That longer arc, he suggested, settled what the single scene had threatened to undo.
Patekar’s habit of stepping in
Khanna also remembered that Patekar would step in with suggestions for other actors during the making of Raja. Those interventions were received differently by different people on set.
- Patekar would offer instructions such as, “Mukesh, do this and that.”
- Khanna remembered Madhuri Dixit asking, “Why? How did you come? Why?”
- Patekar ultimately did not play the role he had been associated with; Paresh Rawal took the part.
An actor without replacement
Khanna’s tribute returned to dialogue delivery, a craft he said he valued himself. He described Patekar’s command of dialogue as singular: “You will not find such an actor. Neither was, nor is, nor will be.”
For Hindi cinema readers, the memory preserves the reasoning behind a performance choice in a mainstream 1990s release. It is a small portrait of how a well-placed actor’s note could move a scene, and why Patekar’s absence is felt.
Source: The Times of India
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