Rohan Sippy

My Nana Patekar story The year must have been 2006. My band Sankara had been having a great year. Earlier that year we'd opened for Rabbi Shergill and Indian Ocean and things were going great. One day Koko (of Agnee fame and at the time our lead guitar player) calls us and says he guys gig tonight? Sure, we all said. Where? Turns out it was the closing ceremony of a qualifying tournament for the World Equestrian Championships which was being held at the NDA. The venue was an open field outside NDA, overlooking Pune. A beatiful if somewhat rustic venue, but no matter there would be old monk and an animal being roasted on a spit as one has at Army parties. Sankara, oh I wish y'all could have heard Sankara. The best damn band that India never got to know. We were all mongrel musicians (with the exception of Koko) and had somehow managed to put together a semi decent band (remember the mongrel part for later). And our set was all originals or improvised covers of obscure songs. We'd take a Mirza Ghalib poem and set it to music and then we'd jam on it for a quarter of an hour. And all our shows were improvised as well and there was one rule - the music never stops whatever happens. so there we were playing our set when we were told that the Chief Guest would say a few words and we turned and there on the side of the stage was Nana Patekar waiting for the band to stop so he could give his speech. But the music never stops right? So the band, which at that point had developed some sort of weird telepathic communication system I can't fully explain dropped the volume and morphed whatever we were playing into a nice chill trip-hoppy trancy vibe and gestured to Nana to begin. Nana steps onto the stage and in that glorious baritone of his begins to deliver his speech. What a moment it was. Gentle breeze, cool Pune evening, under the stars, smell of meat roasting, a crowd of faces shining and the gentle music underneath it all. Nana liked the vibe and rolled with it as well. He had enjoyed our little tasteful disobedience :-) Later, during the dinner break he comes up to us and is very nice. He says "one word of advice. you all have to stay together. ladho, jhagdo lekin ek dusre se alag nahi hona. what y'all have is magic and don't fuck with it" then he goes on to ask a favor of us. He tells us that he has a childhood friend, a classical singer. And this friend and his son used to perform together. And there had been an accident some months ago when they were on tour and the dad survived but the son died. He says that his friend hasn't sung since that day but he feels that if he meets us, his friend will sing. And would we accept an invitation to dinner at his house, along with our instruments? which is how we find ourselves on Nana's balcony at his apartment on Law College Road where hi lived with his mother. Nana recited poetry for us. His friend was there. We drank. We played. And then Anoop asked his friend to join in on one of our songs called Lil Ojas which was straight raga Hamsadhwani and the friend turns to Anoop and says - app ki woh doosri taar thodi chadh gayi hai (your second string is out of tune)! Goddamn mongrel musicians. The gentleman did sing and Nana was very grateful. I never met him again even though he was lovely and would not have minded. In that brief encounter I saw a very lovely human being. A deep soul. There are rumours that he was capable of tempers and worse but I never saw any of that in him. I met a thorough gentleman and a loving soul. RIP Nana. Ishwar aapki aatma ko sadgati de.