The role Nana Patekar never had to play-act

There was one role the legendary actor Nana Patekar never had to rehearse for, never had to learn lines for, and never had to remove his make-up after playing it. It was the role of a farmer.Away from the angry police officers, ruthless gangsters, broken fathers and wounded men he portrayed on screen, Patekar found something quieter in the soil. Farming was not his celebrity hobby or an occasional holiday from Mumbai. It became a part of the life he chose for himself.As Nana Patekar died at 75 on Thursday, after suffering severe chest pain at his flat in Goa, the actor is being remembered for the characters that made him one of Indian cinema's most distinctive performers. But beyond the camera was another Nana. The Nana who preferred his farmhouse, crops, cattle and village life to the glamour of the film industry.He spent much of his time at his farmhouse near Khadakwasla in Pune, a sprawling property where he practised farming. Nana, in several interviews, had described the farmhouse as spread over 27 acres, with crops including rice, wheat, chickpeas, onions, garlic and vegetables. He did not simply own the land. He worked there.Nana used to describe himself as a "farmer at heart" and spoke about how much he preferred the quiet of village life to Mumbai's crowds, buildings and traffic. During the Covid-19 lockdown, he stayed at the farmhouse with his dogs, cows and bullocks. There was something deeply personal for him about that relationship with the land. The boy who had known financial hardship while growing up never quite lost touch with the world that existed before fame.NANA PATEKAR: THE ACTOR WHO ALWAYS REMEMBERED HUNGERVishwanath Patekar, who was popularly known as Nana Patekar, was born in Murud-Janjira, Maharashtra, in 1951. Nana grew up with struggle as part of his early life. He studied at the Sir JJ Institute of Applied Art, worked at an advertising agency and entered theatre before making his mark in cinema.Theatre stayed with him. Also, the humble experiences that came before stardom.Perhaps that was why his performances felt different in the conventional Bollywood sense. There was a rough physical texture to them, but also familiarity. He could play a policeman, gangster, politician, soldier, father or a broken theatre actor, and make them resonate among the audiences.But the man behind those characters never appeared particularly interested in playing the role of a celebrity. Rather, he spent time on his farm.WHEN A FARM BECAME A FORM OF SERVICE FOR NANA PATEKARNana's love for farming eventually became inseparable from his concern for farmers.In 2015, while he was "sipping a glass of whisky", Nana watched the TV news reports about farmer suicides and drought in Maharashtra. Nana spoke about abandoning a plan to buy a luxury car worth Rs 1.5 crore. He and his friend had reportedly saved the money for the car purchase.The money saved for a luxury car went towards helping farmers.That impulse later became part of the work of the NAAM Foundation, which Patekar co-founded with actor Makarand Anaspure. The organisation worked with farmers and rural communities, providing immediate assistance to families affected by farmer suicides while also supporting water conservation and livelihood projects.Nana's own farming craze followed a similar philosophy.The veteran actor had also revealed that by selling his farm produce, he distributed the proceeds among farmers rather than treating the income as another source of personal wealth. His support also extended to families of farmers who had died by suicide. In some cases, widows were provided sewing machines and other means of livelihood.NANA PATEKAR, A CELEBRITY WHO WILL BE REMEMBERED FOR HIS SIMPLICITYThere was another detail that completed the picture. Nana loved cooking.At his farmhouse in Pune, vegetables grown on his own land directly were used in his kitchen. Nana enjoyed preparing food and serving it to friends. It was an ordinary pleasure, almost deliberately so, for a man whose professional life had made him anything but ordinary.Actor Paresh Rawal, in an interview with The Lallantop, India Today's Digital's sister publication, had recalled that Nana would assign all the guests chores while he was cooking food for them.That perhaps explains people's enduring fascination with Nana's life away from cinema.Nana was hailed as an actor who could command a frame with the intensity of a performer who had spent decades understanding human pain. When the cameras were turned off, he seemed the happiest doing things that required no acting performance at all. Working the land, cooking, spending time with animals, and helping people who lived far away from the world of film premieres are the things Nana enjoyed.Cinema gave Nana Patekar fame. The farm became a place where he did not have to act.- Ends(Written by Avinash Kateel)