With Nana Patekar’s passing, Hindi cinema has lost the actor who turned the ordinary Indian’s interior life into high drama. From a small debut in Gaman in 1978 to later mainstream fixtures such as Krantiveer and Welcome, his work kept returning to a single figure: a common man who is hurt, defiant, funny and fully aware of his worth.
That figure was built on deliberate choices. Patekar studied at Sir J.J. School of Art and what is now Raheja School of Arts, then worked as a commercial artist and visualiser. He left that well-paying advertising job to pursue theatre full-time because performance, not security, was the point. He won an early award with the Awishkar theatre group and later worked with Vijaya Mehta on Hamidabaichi Kothi, Mahasagar and Purush.
The same commitment followed him into film. Smita Patil encouraged him to enter Hindi cinema. Later, when N Chandra’s Ankush (1986) ran short of money, Patekar mortgaged his house to help the film get completed. The film succeeded and brought the actor real notice. He also stepped behind the camera to direct Prahaar: The Final Attack (1991), signalling an interest in the whole story rather than only his role.
The anger that came from within
What distinguished Patekar’s common man was the source of his anger. Hindi cinema had already given audiences Sunil Dutt’s Birju in Mother India, angry about exploitation, and Amitabh Bachchan’s Angry Young Man, responding to a failing system. Patekar shifted the battlefield inward. His characters refused to be made to feel inferior by anyone, and they answered any slight with the conviction that one person’s position gave them no claim over another’s self-respect.
That inner anger ran through Ankush, Krantiveer, Diksha and Wajood. It is what made the characters feel like people audiences knew.
A range beyond the angry man
Patekar’s common man took several forms:
- Parinda: an everyman who becomes a gangster by choosing the easiest survival route.
- Taxi No. 9 2 11 and Agni Sakshi: ordinary men wrestling with their own flaws.
- Bluffmaster! and Welcome: small men who work the system to get rich but never quite buy social acceptance.
- Khamoshi: The Musical: a father who cannot speak but remains one of the film’s most expressive figures.
Even with that variety, he was sometimes accused of being typecast in eccentric, idiosyncratic roles. His response was to take parts that demanded restraint: the understated cop in Ab Tak Chappan (2004) and the hapless don in Welcome (2007) both broke the template.
He was also a formidable speaker on screen. The long monologue in Thodasa Roomani Ho Jaayen, the sutradhar-like presence in Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman, and the improvised lover in Gubaare from Dus Kahaniyaan all leaned on his memory and delivery. In Krantiveer, that oratory became the moral engine of the film.
What held these roles together was authenticity, a discipline that likely came from theatre, where a false note could not be hidden. Patekar never let the audience forget the world he had left behind to stand in the performing arts.
Source: The Economic Times
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