Nana Patekar, the Padma Shri recipient and three-time National Award winner, died on Thursday at 75. Maharashtra’s cultural affairs minister Ashish Shelar said the state would honour him with a state funeral, with last rites at his Pune farmhouse at 4 pm. Within hours, one of the quieter tributes came from dialogue writer Sutapa Sikdar, who remembered not the filmography but the way the actor treated an anxious newcomer on the set of Khamoshi: The Musical in 1996.
A feared actor’s unexpected warmth
Sikdar was then a first-timer on her first commercial set, while Patekar was already an established figure in cinema and theatre, known for a short temper. Speaking to SCREEN, she said her first memory of him was “everybody standing scared and so terrified of him”. Yet he took to her. They spoke, had a good time, and after the film he invited her home during Ganpati. The friendship thinned only, she said, because she is “very bad at keeping in touch”.
The scene that sparked an outburst
The warmth was tested when Sikdar wrote a scene without discussing it with Patekar. It centred on his on-screen wife, played by Seema Biswas, and daughter, played by Manisha Koirala. The actor was “very angry”. She called it a terrifying moment. That night he came to her and said, “I know you’re angry. You’re not talking to me.” She replied honestly that anger scares her, recalling her father’s temper in childhood and the helplessness it left her with. “He took it so well,” she said.
Patekar later explained that the outburst was not premeditated; he had been preparing for an intense scene in which his character repeatedly beats his own head in frustration. Sikdar still maintained that his behaviour had not sat well with her.
Grace, and what the industry lacks
For Sikdar, the episode pointed to something larger. It was generous, she argued, for Patekar to accept criticism from a young writer on her first job, adding: “Grace is what we lack today.” The industry, in her view, does not know how to nurture talent. She suggested Hollywood would have used actors like Patekar and her late husband, Irrfan Khan, “in a much better way”.
That observation is the thread worth keeping for the record: a set culture in which a veteran could be feared and still make room for a newcomer’s honesty is a piece of Hindi cinema’s memory, not just one film’s anecdote.
A state farewell
- State funeral: announced Thursday by Ashish Shelar, for contribution to Marathi theatre and Marathi and Hindi cinema.
- Last rites: 4 pm on Thursday at the actor’s Pune farmhouse.
- Honours: Padma Shri and three National Awards.
The immediate record is a state farewell and a body of work spanning Marathi theatre and Hindi cinema. The longer memorial will be the films, and, for those who worked with him, memories like Sikdar’s.
Source: The Times of India
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