Ode to Nana from a torrent user

 

I am sitting in Indore, reading the morning newspaper. There is news of a Marathi-origin don in Indore and another in Dewas.
There is also the news of Nana Patekar’s demise. I grew up in a resource-restrained Marathi mohalla in Khandwa, where the movie Tiranga was telecast every 15 August and 26 January. Krantiveer and Yashwant were another regular, with the iconic dialogue “Aa gaye meri maut ka tamasha dekhne” and “Ek machhar…”

I grew up watching how a resource-restrained Marathi household runs. The anger sits at the centre, with unregulated nervous systems and a world that orbits around it. There is softness there too, but it is quieter.
The anger I am talking about, if I had to show what it looked like, would be these scenes of Nana.
And Nana chose the path less taken and channelled it.

I watch as an observer with a limited understanding of cinema. I am Marathi by ancestry, born in the Hindi-speaking belt, and I have worked in Mumbai and Pune for over a decade, so I can see both places from the distance of being one among them and still at a distance.

Nana Patekar was born in Murud-Janjira, Maharashtra, into a resource-restrained family. His father lost his business, and at an early age he started working as a zebra-crossing painter. His mother’s side had many notorious gangsters, including Manya Surve. It is like Hamid Ansari, the Vice President of India, having Mukhtar Ansari as a cousin—same same but different.

With his father’s business gone, Nana, whose real name was Vishwanath, had to start looking after himself. As he recalled, he painted zebra crossings, getting Rs 35 and walking 16 km back and forth. It reminds me of a couplet by उम्मीद फ़ाज़ली:

“ये सर्द रात, ये आवारगी, ये नींद का बोझ,
हम अपने शहर में होते तो घर गए होते।”

The source of his anger could be pain, poverty and intimidation by his father, and acting may have been the way he could attract his father’s attention. There is also a strange confidence, a refusal to be intimidated by anyone, or maybe it is in the blood of the Deccan. He may have sharpened his perspective at the JJ School of Art.

“कौन सी जा है जहाँ जल्वा-ए-माशूक़ नहीं,
शौक़-ए-दीदार अगर है तो नज़र पैदा कर।"
— Ameer Minai

I just finished reading Unscripted by Vidhu Vinod Chopra.

 He watched Nana in the Marathi play Purush at a theatre in Dadar and first wanted him for the role of Kishen, the role Jackie Shroff ultimately played. As destiny would have it, Nana ended up playing Anna in Parinda.

Maharashtra’s theatre culture is still very much alive and thriving. I have seen the craze for plays like Sangeet Devbabhali and Katyar Kaljat Ghusli.

In Parinda, Nana has a scene about his phobia of fire. During an aarti, the flame of a diya triggers it, and in the backstory he burned down his wife and children. It makes him calm and composed most of the time, but berserk at certain intervals that no one can predict. He is like the personification of Saturn Devouring His Son.

   

Parinda had themes of brotherhood, betrayal, lost values and valour. The villain Anna, played by Nana Patekar, wears a kurta-pyjama and kolhapuri chappals.

In the last scene, Anna kills Kishan (Jackie Shroff), the brother of Karan (Anil Kapoor), and Karan’s wife. Karan, in his quest for revenge, traps Anna inside a burning room and watches him as the flames engulf him. Anna screams like a madman, like Saturn after devouring his son in Goya’s painting. The scene was reportedly shot with real fire, without modern CGI, and Nana Patekar sustained real burns that required hospitalisation.

I watched the film in my college days, and I still revisit it now and then. Another scene is in Salaam Bombay, where Nana makes Raghuvir Yadav dance by hitting him with a belt. He dances like a monkey, with his master making him do it. The white woman Nana was trying to impress becomes uncomfortable and angry, and leaves. This makes Nana angry. Then a girl comes to ask her father to play with her and, frustrated and annoyed, he jolts the girl sharply on the balcony. It was cruel. Nana has mentioned that after that frame there was silence among the people around. He became normal and asked Mira Nair how it was; Mira took time to come out of it.

                            

In some Marathi households, this would be the actual father.

I feel that all those anger scenes were ones Nana could have actually lived, had he become a gangster. The rawness and believability come from that background. I have seen glimpses of such rage in my own neighbourhood. In low income settings, rage and violence are connected.

Sometimes there is justification for it, as in the movie Tiranga. When Nana is attacked by the henchmen of Pralaynath Gundaswamy and he kills them, he brought real street attitude to the screen, with improvised lines like “Maratha hai bhai… Andu-Pandu samjha hai kya?”

I watched Prahaar, and army veterans say it is the closest film ever made to real fauji life. Nana played Major Chavan, a no-nonsense trainer who had himself gone through commando training and shed 20 kg for the role. His cadets, Khandagale and Peter D’Souza, transform over time on a journey from boys to men.

“सर, हर तरफ... जिधर भी देखो, दुश्मन ही दुश्मन है। फर्क सिर्फ इतना है सर—एक सीमा के उस पार, एक सीमा के इस पार। और इस पार का दुश्मन कहीं ज्यादा खतरनाक है सर, जो देश को दीमक की तरह चाटता जा रहा है, खोखला बनाता जा रहा है। तो क्या इस दुश्मन से लड़ना हमारा कर्तव्य नहीं है? हमारा हक नहीं है? और हक के लिए लड़ना कभी गलत नहीं हो सकता!”
— Major Pratap Chavan

Pratap is the son of a sex worker, and he carries that weight. In the army he carries a deep sense of justice and goes beyond the call of duty to fulfil it.

I have watched Prahaar so many times, with its two cadets and Pratap’s own life. It does something to you. It calls for something, and Nana was often hearing that call. He joined the Territorial Army and served in Kargil in 1999. Who would have guessed he would do that?

The one that is very close to me, and that I have watched on a loop, is Ab Tak Chhappan. Nana played Sadhu Agashe, “force ka aadmi hai”. There is the frame where his wife dies and he says not to call an ambulance, because she is no more.

 There is the first scene, with chilling sitar music, where he gossips with gangsters about Salman Khan and Aishwarya and then shoots him.

                                                        

“Hum sab system ka hissa hain. System decide karta hai, apun follow karta hai.”
“Tum log society ka kachra hai… main society ka jamadar.”
“Senior officers hai na mausam ki tarah hote hain… badalte rehte hain.”
“Force ka aadmi hoon, tootunga nahi.”
“Kul mila ke 150 ka gang nahi hoga tera, 40,000 ka gang hai mera police ka. Samajh mein nahi aayega kahan thok diya!”
“Ye le, meri biwi teacher hai, usse baat kar. Woh samjhayegi tere ko.”

I read somewhere Nakul Vaid, who played the rookie cop Jatin Shukla, was scolded by Nana in the first few days of shooting for not having a proper haircut. He was nervous on set. Only later did he find out that Nana had done it on purpose, to make him look authentically anxious in front of the camera.

I can’t imagine anyone else playing that character like Nana.

And the movie that made me cry was Natsamrat. I watched it at Wadala PVR in 2016. I always wanted to speak good Marathi, and the way Nana delivered his dialogues and acted made me fall in love with Kusumagraj’s writing in Marathi.

In the film, the elderly and legendary theatre actor who is retired, out of love divides his wealth to his ungrateful son and daughter, but their behaviour changes after that; they misbehave and humiliate the elderly couple, cajoling them out on the street. Tragically the wife passes away, and he loses his mind in grief and poverty. This play was written by Kusumagraj, whose poem कणा (Spine) in marathi :

‘ओळखलत का सर मला?’ - पावसात आला कोणी,
कपडे होते कर्दमलेले, केसांवरती पाणी.
क्षणभर बसला नंतर हसला बोलला वरती पाहून :
‘गंगामाई पाहुणी आली, गेली घरट्यात राहुन’.
माहेरवाशीण पोरीसारखी चार भिंतीत नाचली,
मोकळ्या हाती जाईल कशी, बायको मात्र वाचली.
भिंत खचली, चूल विझली, होते नव्हते नेले,
प्रसाद म्हणून पापण्यांवरती पाणी थोडे ठेवले.
कारभारणीला घेउन संगे सर आता लढतो आहे
पडकी भिंत बांधतो आहे, चिखलगाळ काढतो आहे,
खिशाकडे हात जाताच हसत हसत उठला
‘पैसे नकोत सर, जरा एकटेपणा वाटला.
मोडून पडला संसार तरी मोड़ला नाही कणा
पाठीवरती हात ठेउन, फक्‍त लढ म्हणा’!

Which in crux is grow spine and fight

“The life is shattered to pieces, Sir,
But my spine still holds its might,
Place your hand on my back,
And just say, ‘Fight.’”

 

I feel Nana uses this poem emotion  in Ab Tak Chhappan, in the last scene with the Dubai-based don. After the murder of his wife and an ugly suspension from the police department, once his equation with the IG of Police is disturbed, he moves to Dubai. In a conversation with Sameer, the Dubai-based don, they talk about “strength and nuisance value”. Nana says that he killed 22 of the don’t shooters and damaged him, and in spite of that he is sitting in front of him, that is his strength (कणा).

And just after that, he kills the don, because he always knew he was behind his wife’s murder.

Nana won many awards, among them:

• Best Supporting Actor: Parinda (1989)
• Best Villain: Angaar (1992)
• Best Actor: Krantiveer (1994)

Through it all, Nana stayed away from the glamour and buzz of the film industry.
But the recognition Nana cherished most was not an award. Satyajit Ray wrote in his personal diary that he wished to work with Nana someday. Nana later said that when he came to know of it, he felt it was the biggest award he had ever got.

And also far from the land of Kishore Kumar, I see two people who came back to their roots: Kishore Kumar and Nana.
Like a salmon fish that takes birth in a river and then swims thousands of kilometres far to grow and feed, and in the end travels thousands of kilometres back to its birthplace, I see this in Nana and Kishore.

 

Kishore Kumar, who often came back to Khandwa after his huge success in Mumbai.

I do not know whether Kishore Kumar and Nana ever met in real life. But I feel one common quest runs through both of them: the quest to go home. It reminds me of an excerpt from Ashu Mishra’s ghazal:

“यहाँ जब आ गए हैं तो वहाँ की याद आती है।
ये शहर-ए-अजनबी में अब किसे जा कर बताएँ हम,
कहाँ के रहने वाले हैं, कहाँ की याद आती है...!”

And today is also the death anniversary of Kishore Kumar and almost a week since Nana passed away.

I think I get it now, I get it.

Kushagra Kadam

PS- I watched most of movies in my engineering day using torrent.