A man of conviction

Missing in action for some time, Nana Patekar says he wants to take it easy now

March 01, 2015 11:47 am | Updated March 02, 2015 08:01 pm IST

Nana Patekar

Nana Patekar

Industry people say that if you are in Nana Patekar’s firing line, beware of his mood. Over the years the actor has mellowed down but his wry humour is still intact. When one praises his performance in the little known Shagird , the Tigmanshu Dhulia film which got a very limited release, one expects him to acknowledge your awareness. Instead, Nana retorts, “Oh! You watched the film and liked the character. Phir to tum mein bhi chor hai .” Each one of us has, I try to sound normal. “That’s my point. You identify with the character only because you find a part of him in you. And that has been my goal.”

This past week he returned with yet another character that we identified with. When Sadhu Agashe counts his hits, it doesn’t come across as bragging. You not only feel that this guy can do it and is not done yet, but also sense where he is coming from. So Shimit Amin’s Ab Tak Chhappan had the promise of a sequel built into its very title. Recalling the experience of the original, Patekar says, “I don’t judge a film by the numbers it makes at the box office, but as an actor you can make out which of the characters will stay with the people. Sadhu Agashe is one of them.”

As for the realism he brings to the character, Patekar says, “I always get involved with films at the writing phase itself. Films come to me as a concept, and then I get involved with the entire process of research and development. It took me two years to get into the skin of Sadhu.”

But more than the shootouts, Patekar says what made Sadhu popular was his life after work. “The fact that these guys also have to help the kids with their homework, impress their wives and take care of their parents made them as human as anybody else.”

However, when you play an encounter specialist, identification leads to a moral issue. How much is too much? “See, we have not said whether encounter is good or bad. We are not justifying his actions or making him a hero. You have to decide whether his actions are justified or not. What I feel is those who belong to the criminal lobby don’t like encounters and those who talk of human rights also don’t like encounters, but common men who have to deal with these criminals on a daily basis don’t mind when cops like Sadhu Agashe pull the trigger.”

He admits it is not as simple as it sounds. “We have tried to show this complexity, that it is not easy to remain honest in the system. It takes a lot of effort because you could be used by your seniors to further their agenda. You might not be on the payroll of the gangster, but your boss can be. That’s why Sadhu says the officer’s job is to just pull the trigger. He is nobody to sit in moral judgment, because often he doesn’t know the complete picture.”

Hurt by the murder of social activist Govind Pansare, Patekar describes it as a dastardly act which won’t be able to kills Pansare’s ideas. “Had that been the case, Gandhian philosophy would have been long gone. You can’t kill a thought.”

But when he talks with conviction, the other side of the story gets muted. “I have many times talked against the communal divide with equal conviction through my characters, but it doesn’t mean communal riots have ceased to happen. It depends on the audience mind.”

He reminds us that people also find his portrayal of Anna in Parinda convincing because the villain had a back story. “To me a villain also has a grey side and a hero also has grey shades. I feel it is this area where a hero and a villain meet, and my job is to explore these shades.”

Comparing the directors of the original and the sequel, Patekar says, “The difference lies in the specialisation. Shimit is essentially an editor while Aejaz is an action director. It reflects in the treatment.”

At 65, Patekar is fighting fight. “I have done all the action scenes myself. There was a scene where Aejaz wanted to use a body double because it required me to jump and land on an uneven surface. I said nothing doing, if you think this is dangerous for me remove this shot.” He exercises for two hours daily. “On the sets I used to joke with Vikram Gokhale who is almost the same age as I am but is overweight, that when he dies I will talk richly about him as a friend and an artist but I won’t give a shoulder to his body.” The wry wit surfaces all over again.

In the last decade, we haven’t seen enough of Patekar in Hindi films and it seems he is holding himself back for Marathi cinema. “I do get offers, but now I am 65 and don’t need money anymore to build a life. I have done my hard yards. I might have ten more years and I want to devote them largely to reading and writing. Also, the kind of work that I really want to do takes a lot out of me. All these years I have lived the joys and sorrows of the characters that I played. Now I want to live my own. I don’t think my fans should have a problem with that.”

But then he does Welcome Back . “It is a sequel and a commitment. It might take a long time to shoot, but it doesn’t affect me emotionally. When Anees Bazmee came to sign me I asked him to swear in his mother’s name if the role was worthy of me, and he did.”

But he does believe the time is ripe for the kind of cinema he wants to make. “I am working on Baba Amte’s biopic. And if the sequel does well, I will direct the third part of Ab Tak Chhappan ,” he declares in Aejaz’s presence.

As for his famous temper, Patekar says, “I don’t lose my temper when people make mistakes. I lose it when they repeat the same mistake.”

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