Amitabh Bachchan has offered a different kind of obituary for Nana Patekar: not a statement, but an archive. After Patekar’s death, Bachchan posted a set of throwback interview clips and press footage, letting Patekar’s own words carry the remembrance.
The archive in Amitabh’s tribute
One clip shows Nana Patekar explaining what Amitabh Bachchan did to commercial Hindi cinema. The line he uses has hardened into a compact film-history lesson:
Amit ji aane ke baad hamara film ka making badal gaya.
Roughly: ‘After Amit ji arrived, the making of our films changed.’ Patekar then lists the roles Bachchan absorbed in one screen presence—hero, comedian, even a turn in a sari—and adds that this shut the shops of many people who once supplied those separate performances.
For a younger reader, the remark is worth sitting with. Before the multi-slot star became routine, Bollywood often leaned on dedicated comic performers, character actors and dramatic leads. Patekar’s claim is that Bachchan compacted that division of labour into a single, more efficient commercial package.
- Nana credited Amitabh with blending action, comedy and drama without separate specialists.
- Amitabh also posted press footage from Kohram, the 1999 film that paired them.
- Nana said he had kept, in his cupboard, a letter from Amitabh praising his role in The Attacks of 26/11.
A letter kept for years
The most personal artefact in the post is the letter. Nana Patekar recalled receiving Amitabh’s note after The Attacks of 26/11 and preserving it carefully. He did not frame it as showbiz convention; he described it as something he simply kept.
That detail matters because it reverses the usual gaze. The tribute is not only Amitabh speaking about a late co-star; it is Amitabh amplifying Nana’s private regard for Amitabh. The clip makes Nana the narrator of his own position in Hindi cinema’s memory.
Why this belongs in the record
The clips are useful beyond mourning. They preserve a first-person account of a shift in the Hindi film star system. Kohram may not be the most discussed film of 1999, but the footage restores it as documentary evidence of a working relationship, and Nana’s commentary gives a peer’s explanation of why the Amitabh era worked the way it did.
Bollywood Chronicle readers know that anniversaries and tributes are where Hindi cinema does some of its best historical work. This one is small but precise: a few clips, a 1999 press appearance, and a letter kept in a cupboard add up to a clearer record than a generic homage.
Source: Moneycontrol
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