Veteran actor Nana Patekar opened up about his personal life in a recent interview, and looked back at a tragic event that made him gaze inwards about the kind of person that he is. Reflecting on his anger issues, he recalled losing an elder brother and a young son, and said that he might have inherited his temper from his abusive mother. He said that she would beat him regularly, and that she would never express sadness, even when her eldest son died as a teenager after falling from a building.
In an interview with The Lallantop, Nana Patekar also spoke about losing his own son, who was born with several disabilities and died at the age of two. Asked about dealing with the loss, he said in Hindi, “My elder son was born with a cleft palate, he also had difficulty seeing through one eye. The first thought that ran through my mind when I’d see him like this was, ‘What will people think about me, that my son looks like this’. Imagine what a terrible man I am. My first worry was what people would say about me, not him.”
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Nana Patekar said that his son was named after the ‘the angriest rishi’ Durvasa. “He died at the age of two-and-a-half, but he taught me so much. He’s the triggering point. It happens…” he trailed off, adding that he has never been one to wallow in sadness. “I’ve always had a chin-up attitude. I don’t cry. I cry only in the movies, and I do that for money,” he said, also opening up about his wife. He said that they haven’t been living together for years, and she was the one who cared for his elderly mother while he was away living his life. Once again, he trailed off without going into the details.
He said that he would smoke constantly when his son died, which repelled people around him. “At that time, I used to smoke about 60 cigarettes a day. I even smoked while bathing. But it’s a very bad thing. No one would sit in my car because of the foul smell. I never drank alcohol much but I smoked a lot,” the actor said. Nana Patekar said that he often tries to examine his temper issues, but finds himself returning to the same behavioural patterns. He said that his mother was extremely violent with him, and that she died only recently, at the age of 99.
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