‘Control Uday, control’

Not because the film has changed, but Last week, I watched Welcome again.

I knew every turn of the story. I knew when the next joke would land and when Uday Shetty would lose his temper. Yet I laughed as if I was watching it for the first time.

Perhaps that is the strange comfort of a good comedy. It asks nothing from you except to sit back and enjoy it.

And there was Nana Patekar as unforgettable as ever.

“Control Uday, control.”

I have always loved that dialogue. It is funny because Nana made it funny. The words themselves are ordinary. His delivery made them memorable.

I did not know, while watching the film last week, that I would soon hear his name in the past tense.

The news of Nana Patekar’s death on Thursday morning came as a shock. At 75, he had already given Indian cinema a body of work that stretched across decades, languages and genres. But knowing that does little to prepare you for the moment when an actor whose face has been familiar for years is suddenly gone.

Some deaths arrive as headlines.

Others arrive as memories.

Nana’s arrived for me through Welcome.

But he was never only Uday Shetty.

That is what makes his passing difficult to reduce to a single performance. He had an unusual ability to move between worlds. He could carry the weight of a serious dramatic role and then, in another film, surrender himself completely to comedy.

There was always an edge to him. Even in laughter, there was something sharp. Even when he was silent, he seemed to be saying something.

Perhaps that is why his performances stayed with people.

The tributes that followed his death revealed how differently people knew him.

Riteish Deshmukh remembered the actor extraordinary range and the warmth he found in him away from the camera. Sunny Deol recalled a friendship that survived even though the two actors never shared a film. Anupam Kher remembered not just a great performer but a human being who had touched his life.

These memories matter because they take Nana beyond the characters he played.

Behind Uday Shetty was a man who had spent decades building his own language of performance, refusing to fit neatly into one kind of role.

And perhaps that is what I realised while watching Welcome again.

We often think we are returning to a film.

In reality, we are returning to a moment in our own lives.

The film remains unchanged. We are the ones who have changed.

A joke that once made us laugh for one reason may make us smile for another. A familiar face may suddenly remind us of how much time has passed.

Last week, I watched Welcome simply because I wanted to have fun.

Today, I think about it differently. because the man who gave Uday Shetty his voice, his temper and his extraordinary comic energy is no longer here.

Nana Patekar has left the world.

And somewhere in the middle of all that chaos, someone is still telling him:

“Control Uday, control.”