Amid sparse Bollywood presence, Nitin Desai bid farewell with full state honours

Raigad (Maharashtra): National Award-winning art director Nitin Chandrakant Desai was cremated with full state honours in a corner of his famous shooting studios in Khalapur on Friday evening, but few from Bollywood turned up for his last rites.

Desai, 57, died by hanging at one of his studios in the N. D. Art World Pvt. Ltd. - which he had nurtured for nearly two decades – on the morning of August 2. After the autopsy in Sir J. J. Hospital in Mumbai, his body was kept briefly for people to pay their last respects at the hospital this morning.

Prominent among those who reached there included Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, Deputy CM Ajit Pawar, Minister M. P. Lodha, Bharatiya Janata Party Mumbai chief Ashish Shelar and others. Later it was taken in an ambulance to his studio in Khalapur, near Karjat in Raigad and kept for two hours to enable his legion of fans and admirers to take a final ‘darshan’.

Among the prominent personalities from Bollywood and Marathi film industry who turned up for the funeral were actor Aamir Khan, Manoj Joshi, Ashutosh Gowarikear, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Avinash Narkar, Aadesh Bandekar, Amol Kolhe, Subodh Bhave, Mansi Naik, while Salman Khan represented by his make-up artist Rajubhai and others.

Several politicians from different political parties also turned up including Chhatrapati Udayanraje Bhosale, Vinod Tawade, Mahendra Thorve and others. From the immediate family were his shocked mother Meenatai C. Desai, Nitin’s grieving wife Neha, their children – son Kant, daughters Tanvi and Mansi with her husband, and his paternal uncle Shrikant Desai – who worked and encouraged him for decades in the film industry and at the Raigad studios.

Nearly all the 75-odd staffers of the studios, many of whom were local villagers and enjoyed a great personal rapport with Nitin Desai, close friends like Motiram Thombare, Sudhir Thombare and their entire group, several among them seen weeping after his last glimpse, also paid their tearful homage.

Breaking traditions, daughter Mansi with tears streaming down her cheeks, lent a shoulder to her father’s body for a short stretch to the funeral pyre within the studio complex as per Desai’s wishes.

After the police gun salute and other official formalities, the gathering also saluted Desai, while some rent cries of ‘Nitin Desai Amar Rahe’ as the pyre was lit under a grey atmosphere with a cloudy sky.

In a brief interaction with the media, Aamir later said it was "tragic and difficult to believe that Desai was no more, and wished that he had tried to reach out for help with his financial problems". "I knew him for many years, last we met around 8 months ago for a couple of hours. He did a lot of brilliant and amazing work. We have lost a very special person… We had no inkling of his troubles…" he said.

The Thombares - who were with Desai and helped even with the studio construction work - said that he will be sorely missed by the people of surrounding villages for whom he had done a lot over the years.

Earlier on Friday, a stoic Neha Desai filed a complaint with Khalapur police station accusing the ECL/Edelweiss group and is executives of harassment and mental torture which drove her husband to take the extreme step that has shaken Bollywood.