Sham Kaushal, Mehul Kumar and Aneet Padda remember Nana Patekar

Friends and colleagues of Nana Patekar are sharing personal memories of the late actor. Action director Sham Kaushal said the loss has left "a big vacuum" in his life.

Kaushal said Patekar gave him his first break as an action director in Prahaar: The Final Attack (1991), which the actor also directed. After that film the two became as close as brothers. In 1998, when Kaushal's appendix ruptured, Patekar rushed him to Nanavati hospital. In 2003, during Kaushal's cancer surgery, he stayed in the operation theatre until Kaushal woke up.

To his sons Vicky Kaushal and Sunny Kaushal, Patekar was a father figure who had known them since they were crawling. Kaushal last met him on September 21, over lunch during the Ganpati celebrations, and said he could not stop crying when he saw the actor's mortal remains. Vanvaas was their last film together. He thanked the state government for honouring Patekar, saying the actor truly deserved it.

Filmmaker Mehul Kumar directed Patekar in Tiranga, Krantiveer and Kohram. He said Patekar signed Tiranga after Rajinikanth and Naseeruddin Shah had both turned it down, and that Kohram put him on screen with Amitabh Bachchan for the first time. Kumar had already finalised the story for Krantiveer 2, and Patekar had agreed to do it. "He had only one problem. Temper," Kumar said, adding that the actor had a kind heart.

Saiyaara actor Aneet Padda wrote on social media that she hardly spoke when she first met him, and learnt a lot just by watching him. Reports say their film together is Shakti Shalini, a horror-comedy directed by Aditya Sarpotdar. "That one of his last films was with me still leaves me without words," she wrote.