Nana Patekar dies at 75, and Maharashtra receives him in Pune

Nana Patekar died on Thursday at his home in Goa. He was 75. The Press Trust of India, citing a doctor at the hospital where he was pronounced dead, said the cause was a suspected cardiac arrest. Born Vishwanath Patekar in 1951 in Maharashtra, he had worked in Hindi and Marathi cinema for nearly five decades. The Tribune reported that his body was cremated in Pune with state honours, and that chief minister Devendra Fadnavis received the remains. He is survived by a wife, from whom he was separated, and a son.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote on X that Patekar had brought intensity, individuality and an unmistakable presence to the screen, and that the characters would be remembered. The sentence is the official mourning note. The career under it is more particular than a tribute usually allows, because the roles that made the name were not of one kind.

From Gaman to a National Award for a vigilante

Patekar's film debut was Gaman in 1978, Muzaffar Ali's film about a taxi driver from Uttar Pradesh in Bombay. The part was not the lead. It put him in a cinema that was already looking at the city as a workplace rather than a backdrop. Wider recognition came with Parinda in 1989, Vidhu Vinod Chopra's gangster film, in which Patekar played Anna, a figure of controlled violence whose manner became a reference for later villains. Krantiveer, in 1994, turned him the other way. He played a man pulled into public anger, and the performance won him a National Film Award for best actor. He already had a National Award for best supporting actor. A third National Award followed for his work as a director and actor in the Marathi film. The count most obituaries used on Thursday was three National Film Awards, plus the Padma Shri.

The international credit is Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay!, released in 1988 and nominated for the Academy Award for best foreign-language film. Patekar plays Baba, a drug dealer and pimp in a film whose centre is a child working the streets. The part is small beside the boy's story and large in the memory of people who saw the film abroad, because it was often the first time his face travelled with a subtitle. Nair's film and Chopra's film, a year apart, fixed two versions of him: the man in a realist street drama, and the man in a stylised underworld.

A presence that directors wrote toward

Later Hindi leads used the same pressure. In Agni Sakshi he played an obsessive husband. In Ghulam he was the local boss against Aamir Khan. In Taxi No. 9211 he was a man who had lost his money and his temper in a single day. The roles repeat a method more than a character. He spoke as if the line had been interrupted, and he let a scene sit in silence longer than the hero opposite him wanted. Directors who needed a man the room already feared wrote the part for that habit. Directors who needed a comic irritation used the same habit at a lower volume. The range is real. It is also narrow in the way a strong instrument is narrow.

The Marathi work mattered in Maharashtra in a way the Hindi obituaries sometimes skip. He acted and directed in Marathi, and the state honours in Pune on Thursday are the local recognition of that half of the career. Fadnavis receiving the body is a political photograph. It is also a statement that the state claimed him as a Maharashtra actor, not only as a Hindi character player who happened to be born there.

What Thursday settles

The medical line is still the hospital doctor's. PTI reported a suspected cardiac arrest, which is a first finding, not a completed post-mortem account. The place of death is the Goa house. The cremation is Pune. Between those two points the public record is the tribute from the prime minister, the chief minister at the airport or the ghat, and the three National Awards. The films that carry the name are already in circulation: Gaman, Salaam Bombay!, Parinda, Krantiveer. A sticker or a retrospective will follow. The work those screenings will show is the one he finished.