Patekar’s funeral had no red carpet. But it had something better: roots.
Nana Patekar’s funeral in Donje, Pune, drew thousands — mostly farmers. Bollywood? Not so much. The silence from Mumbai’s film fraternity has sparked a quiet storm of reflection, not just over grief, but identity.
Marathi filmmaker Pravin Tarde didn’t mince words: 'The fact that Bollywood people did not attend the funeral does not diminish Nana’s greatness.' But he wasn’t letting the industry off the hook either. He called out the absence as a failure of kinship, not just protocol. 'At the very least, those whom Nana called his friends should have been there,' he said.
Jackie Shroff and Suresh Wadkar showed up. That was it. No Shah Rukh Khan. No Ranbir Kapoor.
No one from the usual red-carpet orbit. And yet, the procession moved on, led by men who smelled of soil and sweat. Tarde pointed to them, not the stars. As the real testament.
'A farmer who came from Dhule is much greater than Bollywood heroes,' he said. Patekar never claimed to be a star. He said he was a farmer. And when he died in Goa on October 8 after a heart attack, his body returned to the land he loved.
His last rites were performed on his own farm. The irony wasn’t lost on anyone: a man who spent decades railing against the system now faced a system that didn’t show up. Tarde questioned why the response was different for someone like Patekar compared to lesser-known actors, where white clothes and long queues are standard.
Here, the only queue was the one leading to the field. Political figures came. Artists came. But the industry that once lionised him?
Quiet. The question isn’t whether they should’ve come. It’s why they didn’t. And what it says about how we measure legacy.
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