For a child growing up in Dhaka and later in the Bangladeshi community in Doha in the 1990s, the VCR was a machine that could transport an entire middle-class household somewhere it would probably never go.
Later came the VCD, with its scratched discs, unreliable picture quality and the promise of three hours away from ordinary life.
On those screens, Hindi cinema offered another universe. Curly-haired heroines ran across Alpine meadows. Broad-chested heroes, some with chocolate-box faces and glossy lips, pursued them through Switzerland in songs which appeared without context and warning.
To middle class families who had never travelled to Europe or America, Bollywood provided that affordable passport to a world of impossible beauty.
And then there was Nana Patekar.
With his lean face, piercing eyes, weathered features and a voice that could turn an ordinary sentence into an interrogation, Patekar seemed to have walked into the wrong movie.
He had none of the effortless glamour of the reigning stars. Nor did he possess the towering heroic charisma with which Amitabh Bachchan had defined the angry young man of the 1970s. But Patekar brought something arguably more unsettling…anger without the protection of heroism.
Bachchan's fury had been majestic but Patekar's was intimate and impatient. And occasionally frightening. He could look like the man sitting across from you on a crowded bus, until he began speaking and the entire room appeared to shrink.
For many of us, he was among the first Hindi film actors who made dialogue itself an attraction. We repeated his lines not because they sounded romantic, but because the words seemed to carry an electric charge.
Patekar, who died Thursday, October 8, at 75, following a cardiac arrest in Goa, spent nearly five decades proving that a leading man did not need conventional beauty, a romantic image or even the audience's affection to command the screen.
He was found unresponsive at his home and could not be revived, according to hospital officials. His son, Malhar, confirmed his death.
Born Vishwanath Patekar on January 1, 1951, in Maharashtra, he came to cinema through Marathi theatre, an apprenticeship that would shape virtually everything about his performances.
Unlike actors who relied on the camera to magnify their presence, Patekar seemed to approach the camera as though it were an adversary.
He could speak rapidly, almost swallowing his words, before stopping abruptly. His silences were rarely peaceful. His eyes continued the argument even after the dialogue ended.
He made his Hindi film debut in Muzaffar Ali's Gaman in 1978, entering an industry where mainstream commercial cinema and a smaller, more realistic filmmaking tradition existed in uneasy proximity.
Patekar belonged naturally to the second world, although he would eventually become indispensable to the first. His early work included Ankush and Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay!, the 1988 film about children surviving on the streets of Mumbai that earned international recognition and an Academy Award nomination.
Then came Vidhu Vinod Chopra's Parinda in 1989.
As Anna, a gangster whose brutality coexisted with psychological fragility, Patekar delivered a performance that transformed his career.
His character was terrifying because his violence appeared to come from somewhere deeply damaged. He could be calculating one moment and almost childlike the next. The performance earned him the National Film Award for Best Supporting Actor.
In Krantiveer (1994), he became Pratap Narayan Tilak, a man whose outrage against corruption, communal hatred and political manipulation found expression in explosive monologues.
The film was hardly subtle. Its politics were delivered through confrontations, speeches and emotional declarations.
But Patekar understood something about popular cinema: an audience did not always want a measured argument. Sometimes it wanted someone to articulate frustrations that ordinary life required people to suppress.
He won the National Film Award for Best Actor.
In Agni Sakshi (1996), he portrayed an obsessive, abusive husband, a disturbing role that demonstrated how easily his intensity could become threatening rather than righteous. It brought him another National Film Award.
Those three awards established him among India's most accomplished screen performers. Yet his significance went beyond prizes.
Patekar challenged the assumption that screen magnetism required physical perfection. He made an unconventional face a commercial asset and a distinctly abrasive personality a form of stardom.
He was not always the hero. Sometimes he was the villain. Frequently he occupied the uncomfortable space between the two. And he could make an audience watch him even when it had no reason to like him.
He also demonstrated that his gifts were not confined to rage. In Khamoshi: The Musical, he played a deaf father with a tenderness that required little of his famous voice. In Ab Tak Chhappan, he became a police officer whose professional detachment was more chilling than any shouted threat.
His comic reinvention as the gangster Uday Shetty in Welcome (2007) introduced him to younger audiences. Here, the same impatience that once made him menacing became hilarious.
In Marathi cinema, Natsamrat (2016), in which he portrayed an aging stage actor confronting humiliation and loss, offered another reminder of his theatrical roots.
He directed and starred in Prahaar: The Final Attack (1991), a film about military discipline and civilian indifference. In 2013, the Indian government awarded him the Padma Shri.
Patekar's public personality was often as combative as the characters he portrayed.
He was known for blunt interviews, an austere lifestyle and a reluctance to participate in the polished celebrity culture that increasingly surrounded Bollywood.
His private life contained considerable grief. He spoke publicly about losing his young son, Durvasa, and about his own shortcomings as a father. Such admissions complicated the image of a man whose screen characters often appeared incapable of admitting weakness.
His career also became entangled in one of the most consequential controversies in modern Indian cinema. In 2018, actress Tanushree Dutta publicly renewed allegations that Patekar had sexually harassed her during the filming of Horn 'Ok' Pleassss in 2008.
Patekar denied the allegations.
Dutta's account became an important catalyst for India's #MeToo movement, encouraging wider scrutiny of sexual harassment and power within the entertainment industry.
Mumbai police filed a closure report in 2019, citing insufficient evidence. Dutta challenged the findings. In March 2025, a Mumbai magistrate dismissed her challenge, citing legal limitations concerning the older allegations and the lack of evidence supporting the later complaint.
The controversy remained an important part of his public record, raising questions that extended far beyond one actor's reputation. There was, however, another side to his life away from cinema.
In 2015, amid severe drought and mounting distress among farmers in Maharashtra, Patekar joined actor Makarand Anaspure to establish the Naam Foundation.
The organisation supported families affected by farmer suicides and undertook water conservation projects, including the restoration of rivers, streams and other water sources.
According to figures released by the foundation, its work between 2015 and 2025 helped restore 2,246 water sources and rejuvenate 178 rivers, benefiting millions of farmers.
Unlike celebrity philanthropy built primarily around public appearances, the foundation pursued long-term projects addressing rural water scarcity. Patekar continued speaking about water conservation in the final year of his life.
His activism did not erase the controversies. Nor did the controversies diminish the measurable importance of his charitable work. Both belonged to a public life that resisted easy categorisation.
By the time Patekar entered his seventies, Hindi cinema had changed almost beyond recognition.
The VCR had disappeared. The VCD followed it into obsolescence. Switzerland was no longer an unimaginable destination, and the carefully manufactured glamour of Bollywood had migrated onto smartphones.
Yet Patekar's performances retained something remarkably durable. And the reason was not merely nostalgia. He had understood that cinematic authority could come from discomfort rather than charm, from an imperfect face rather than a handsome one, and from the suggestion that a character might lose control at any moment.
After his death, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised his distinctive screen presence, while actor Akshay Kumar recalled the singular quality of his voice and performances.
For those of us who first encountered him on a flickering television screen in the 1990s, his significance was more personal. He interrupted the fantasy.
Between the Alpine landscapes, improbable romances and elaborately choreographed songs, he introduced someone who looked as though he might actually live in our neighbourhood.
He was not necessarily kinder, wiser or more admirable than the beautiful people around him. Often, he was considerably less agreeable. But he seemed real. And when he spoke, we listened.
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Yusuf Banna is a full-time poet and part-time journalist