Days after Nana Patekar died on October 8, 2026, an old conversation between the actor and filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj has returned to circulation, and it is being shared for its quiet register rather than any twist. In the video, Patekar speaks about visiting a seriously ill Irrfan Khan at his home in Madh, Mumbai.
Irrfan died on April 29, 2020, after a long battle with cancer. The clip returns at a particular moment: Patekar, 75, died after a cardiac arrest at his Goa residence, and audiences are once again going through his interviews and films for what he left behind.
The raatrani request
Patekar recalled Irrfan telling him, “Mujhe raatrani ka phool bahut pasand hai. Bas ye yaad rakhna” — I love night-blooming jasmine; please remember that. The request was small, almost domestic, and Patekar said it stayed with him long after Irrfan’s death. “Sometimes, I feel I should plant a raatrani tree at his house in Madh,” he said.
A bond without airs
It would be easy to read the clip as just a sad memory. For regular watchers of Hindi cinema, it records something rarer: the mutual respect between two actors with very different screen personalities. Patekar remembered Sutapa Sikdar, Irrfan’s wife, working as a script assistant on Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Khamoshi and asking him to recommend Irrfan in the early days. His reply was a measure of that respect: “One day, Irrfan will recommend our names.”
Years later, Patekar said of him: “He left us so early. He was a star but didn’t have starry airs.” Bhardwaj added that Irrfan was “a rare personality.”
Sutapa Sikdar’s tribute
After Patekar’s death, Sikdar wrote that her first film was Khamoshi: The Musical with him. Patekar was known for his anger, she recalled, but he was kind and generous to her. She also imagined meeting him and Irrfan again some day, over tea, at what she called “sukoon wala” station — a station of peace.
What the record keeps
- Patekar was cremated at his Donje farmhouse near Pune with full state honours; his son Malhar performed the last rites.
- Jackie Shroff, Sajid Nadiadwala and Anil Sharma attended the funeral.
- Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and deputy chief minister Eknath Shinde paid their respects.
- Patekar had reportedly completed shooting for Shakti Shalini, with Aneet Padda, and has projects awaiting release.
What the resurfaced clip adds is not a new fact about a film, but a piece of emotional record: one actor asking another to remember the flower he loved, and the other carrying it for six years.
Source: Moneycontrol
Comments