Nana Patekar, one of Hindi cinema’s most forceful screen presences, died on Thursday morning (October 8, 2026) after a cardiac arrest. Shah Rukh Khan paid tribute with a long message that reads less like a formal remembrance and more like a student’s debt to a difficult, demanding teacher.
The first meeting
Shah Rukh posted a still from Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman (1992), the film where the two shared screen, and recalled meeting Nana for the first time. Nervous and star-struck, he fiddled with his hair. Nana swatted his hand away and told him, in Shah Rukh’s account, not to style his hair like a hero because he was an actor.
“He didn’t flatter you. He didn’t tell you what you wanted to hear. He told you what you needed to hear. That was Nana.”
That short description, from Shah Rukh’s note, captures the relationship. Nana’s correction was the opposite of flattery, but it was also an early definition of acting as a craft rather than an image.
Straightforward, rough, honest
Shah Rukh described the veteran as straightforward, rough and honest. The affection, he wrote, came in a strange wrapper: Nana would shout first, and somewhere between the third or fourth insult, you would realise you were being hugged. “He loved me and I loved him back,” Shah Rukh added.
The tribute also remembered Nana as a fierce carrom player. Shah Rukh wished for more time: another conversation, another argument, another cup of tea, another game of carrom. He said the loss leaves a void in cinema and in the hearts of all Indians.
Two films, one lesson
Shah Rukh and Nana worked together in Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman and later in Shakti: The Power (2002). For fans, revisiting either film is the easiest way to see the mentor-student chemistry the note describes. It also shows how early advice stays with an actor long after the film ends.
Shah Rukh closed with Nana’s words as a lifelong instruction: while chasing the hero, do not lose the actor. For Hindi cinema fans, it is as much a tribute to Nana as it is a reminder of what made Shah Rukh’s own journey distinctive.
- Nana Patekar died on October 8, 2026, after a cardiac arrest.
- Shah Rukh Khan shared a long tribute and a still from Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman.
- He called Nana a mentor, teacher, critic and friend.
Source: The Hindu