Nana Patekar: The Man Behind the Hero

Of a childhood favourite, a shy philanthropist, a proud Maratha, and an actor who insisted on going to Kargil.

I was reminded today of my schooldays. Children often ask one another who their favourite actors and actresses are. My answer would invariably invite laughter. My favourite actor was not a devastatingly handsome man, nor one admired by the ladies. It was Nana. Nana Patekar.

I could hardly blame my classmates. Hindi cinema offered them an abundance of conventional heroes: Shah Rukh Khan, with his dangerous eyes in Baazigar; Salman Khan, who had captured a generation's imagination in Maine Pyar Kiya; and Akshay Kumar, whose youthful swagger was beginning to make its mark in Mohra. And then there was my choice. Nana Patekar. One can imagine the bewilderment.

I could never quite explain it. I simply knew that when Nana appeared on screen, I paid attention. Something about him held me there.

We lived in an orchard in the Shimla Hills, and DD1 was the only television channel we had. The first patriotic film I watched was Tiranga, with Raj Kumar and Nana sharing the screen. What a jodi! Phenomenal, it was.

Raj Kumar possessed a grandeur entirely his own. He could make a line of dialogue sound as though it had been pronounced into history. Nana was different, rawer, more unsettling.

There is a scene in Tiranga that has stayed with me. Nana's character is confronted by armed assailants who fire at him and his wife. He responds with his pistol, bringing the confrontation to its conclusion, and declares, with unmistakable pride, "Maratha hoon Maratha!"

I remember the force of those words. Even in real life, Nana was a proud Maratha. And the declaration seemed to carry something beyond the demands of the screenplay: an unvarnished pride in who he was and where he came from. The scene stayed with me. I could not have explained why, at that time. Years later, I would discover reasons to admire the man beyond the actor. Two stories, in particular, have never left me.

The first concerns a car that was never bought.

Nana had saved ₹1.5 crore to buy a luxury car. One evening, while watching television, he saw a report about a farmer who had died by suicide and the family he had left behind. What struck Nana was their deprivation, their hunger, the misery visible in their eyes.

He could have felt sympathy and moved on. Most of us do. Instead, he asked himself a simple question: What can I do?

He decided to use the money to help farmers, initially intending to distribute ₹15,000 each to a thousand of them. He was advised to meet the bereaved women first. Hesitantly, he did. That encounter made the suffering he had seen on television painfully immediate. These were not statistics in a news bulletin; they were families struggling to survive after losing their breadwinners.

Working with his friend and fellow actor Makarand Anaspure, Nana helped establish Naam Foundation. What began as a personal decision grew into something extraordinary. Within two months, the foundation had collected ₹60 crore, with nearly ₹80 lakh reportedly arriving on the first day. Ordinary Indians, many from the middle and lower-middle classes, contributed because they believed in the cause.

Consider the transformation. A man gives up a luxury he can afford, and his decision inspires thousands of others to help people they may never meet. The car would have been a possession. What followed became a movement of compassion. No foundation can, by itself, resolve the structural crisis facing Indian agriculture. But Nana refused to treat the suffering of farmers as somebody else's responsibility. He turned an impulse into an institution, and a moment of compassion into sustained action.

Moving as this story is, however, it is not the one that makes me pause longest. That distinction belongs to Kargil.

Nana did not have to go. He was an actor, not a serving soldier under orders to report to the front. He could have remained within the familiar protections of his profession, made films and expressed his patriotism from a safe distance. Nobody would have thought less of him.

Instead, when the Kargil conflict broke out in 1999, he sought permission from the then Defence Minister, George Fernandes, to join the troops. In fact, he was adamant. He wanted to go at any cost! His request had a background. While preparing for Prahaar, Nana had undergone rigorous military training with the Maratha Light Infantry at its regimental centre in Belgaum. He completed commando training and was an accomplished marksman who had competed in rifle shooting at the national level.

Special permission was eventually, hesitantly granted. Nana spent around 60 days with Army personnel during the conflict, travelling through areas including Dras, Leh, Kupwara and Baramulla. He became part of a Quick Reaction Team, or QRT, living alongside soldiers in the conflict zone. And he was a good shot. His marksmanship was not a theatrical flourish; it was a skill he had developed. Accounts of his time with the Army describe his role with the QRT, although Nana himself was reluctant to disclose operational details. What is clear is that he went well beyond a ceremonial visit. He quit films at the peak of his career to fight in Kargil.

Can you imagine another actor leaving his vanity van and going to Kargil? On a film set, danger can be rehearsed. A scene can be repeated, a camera repositioned, and a director can call cut. At the front, there is no such assurance. A soldier does not know what the next moment will bring. There is no script, no retake and no guarantee of returning safely.

Nana chose to place himself among those men. His profession offered him every reason to remain at a distance, yet he asked to go where the danger was real. He was not obliged to share their risks. He wanted to.

I would never equate his time with the troops with a lifetime of military service. The soldiers who fought at Kargil carried responsibilities and dangers that cannot be compared with those of a visiting actor. But that distinction should not diminish the significance of his decision. He sought special permission, went to the conflict zone and spent weeks alongside the men who were fighting for the nation.

When he returned, he spoke of the experience with characteristic understatement, describing it as a small contribution he could make for the country. He also recalled the physical toll: he weighed 76 kilograms when he left and 56 when he returned.

A small contribution. One wonders what he would have called a great one.

The story of the car reveals a man who could not remain unmoved by the suffering of strangers. Kargil reveals something different: a man unwilling to remain at a distance when his country's soldiers were facing danger. In one instance, he surrendered a luxury; in the other, his life!

These were not performances. There was no audience whose applause he needed, no director to call cut. He could have stayed away from both situations. He chose not to.

Nana's death last week has made these memories all the more poignant. I find myself returning to the boy in the Shimla Hills, watching Tiranga on DD1. He knew nothing of Naam Foundation, of the farmers' widows or of the money that would be raised. He knew nothing of the Maratha Light Infantry, the Quick Reaction Team or Kargil.

He simply liked Nana.

Perhaps that is one of the curious privileges of childhood: we sometimes recognise what we cannot yet explain. Experience arrives later, bringing its arguments and its more sophisticated vocabulary. Occasionally, it does not correct an early instinct. It gives that instinct a deeper meaning.

I find myself thinking of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and of Mark Antony's tribute to Brutus:

"...the elements so mix'd in him that Nature might stand up And say to all the world, This was a man!"

The words are not a declaration of perfection. They are an acknowledgement of a humanity that cannot be reduced to a profession, a public image or a single achievement.

Nana was an actor of extraordinary intensity. But his legacy extends beyond the characters he portrayed. It includes the car he did not buy, the foundation that grew from his decision, and his willingness to go to Kargil when he could have stayed away.

I cannot claim to have known the man personally. But I know what his work meant to me, and what I felt when I learnt of these choices. The boy who watched Tiranga could not have imagined that the actor who declared "Maratha hoon, Maratha!" would one day seek permission to stand alongside soldiers in a real war.

Today, I find myself thinking that perhaps I had recognised something before I had the words to describe it. My favourite actor was Nana Patekar. I could not explain it then. I think I can now.

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This article was submitted to AltBollywood by Sartaj Chaudhary, Master of Laws, University of Kent, Canterbury, U.K.

AltBollywood welcomes reader submissions. For more on the stories behind Indian cinema, read our piece on Ramayana: Part 1 and Valmiki's Ramayana.