Nana Patekar earned Rs 35 a month at 13, walked 8 km daily and got one meal when his father lost everything

Nana Patekar, who died in Goa on Thursday at the age of 75, had often spoken about the years that shaped the man audiences came to know for his intense performances and blunt honesty. In a 2015 interview with Bombay Times, ahead of Welcome Back, Patekar recalled how his family’s financial collapse forced him to start working when he was just 13.

He walked eight kilometres after school to paint film posters in Chunabhatti, earning Rs 35 a month and getting one meal a day.

For Nana Patekar, those years were not just a chapter of hardship. He believed they became his education.


“When I was just 13, we went from being middle class to lower middle class and finally lower class, as someone close to my father took away everything he had including his property,” he told Bombay Times. “All of a sudden, I started working at the age of 13. After school, I would go walk up and down eight kilometres to Chunabhatti to paint film posters to make Rs 35 per month and get a meal a day.”

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Patekar said he was still in Class IX when his family’s circumstances changed. His father had lost everything and he had to help support the family.


“I was in Class IX but that humiliation and hunger taught me so much that I didn’t need to go to any acting school. I had to support my family as my father had lost everything.”

Nana Patekar: ‘There can be no fragrance better than that of a chapati’

The experience also changed the way Nana Patekar looked at food. He remembered going to friends’ homes around lunchtime or dinner, hoping someone would offer him something to eat.

“I used to go land up at some friend’s place at lunch time or dinner time and say, ‘Hi. Hello. How are you?’ hoping that he may ask me and insist that I have a roti.”

He had a simple way of describing what that meant to him.

“So for me there can be no fragrance better than that of a chapati.”

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Patekar also recalled how he stopped eating sweets after being unable to afford them as a child.

“Fortunately or unfortunately, I don’t eat sweets today. I used to like them so much at that time, but since I could not get them then, till today I don’t eat sweets. Today, sweets are like gold for me that I will not eat.”

The anger behind Nana Patekar’s image

Patekar was often seen as an angry and intense personality, both on screen and off it. But in the interview, he connected that anger to the humiliation he had experienced as a teenager.

“I think it’s because of the humiliation I faced then. The way people treated me, the moment I remember that I get tears in my eyes.”

He said he had spent more than five decades working by then, but the meaning of work had changed.

“From 13 till today, I am working past 51 years. Fortunately, today my hobby and profession is the same, that time it was compulsion.”

Patekar described his younger self as helpless and inferior and said those feelings eventually emerged as anger.

“Actually I was helpless and inferior and that eventually came out as anger.”

Yet he said he did not like violence and did not usually act on his anger.

“I don’t like to raise my hand and have hit my 30-year-old son Malhar only once. I feel like hitting people but don’t.”

Nana Patekar's 750 sq ft home he never felt the need to leave

Despite becoming a well-known actor, Patekar said he had not changed his needs much. He recalled that the family had bought their home for Rs 1.1 lakh and that he continued to live there.

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“I have not increased my needs at all. My needs are the same. If you come to my house, you will be shocked. My house is 750 sq ft., we had bought it for Rs 1.1 lakhs, but even today I stay there only,” he had said.

‘I don’t have that fear of death’

Perhaps the most striking part of the old interview, in light of his death, was Patekar’s own description of his relationship with mortality.

“From the beginning I don’t have that fear of death.”

He said he was not afraid to confront difficult situations or people.

“I am not afraid of getting into anything in front of me and I will go and catch the person who is wrong, whether he is holding a gun or whatever else. I don’t worry about the consequences.”

For an actor who built a career on characters that often carried anger, vulnerability and defiance at the same time, Patekar’s account of his early life offered an explanation that went well beyond the screen.