With his very first film, Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na, Prateik (Babbar) was noticed in Bollywood. A cameo was enough for film-makers to realise that here was a boy with talent. With acting skills inherited from his mother, the great Smita Patil, Prateik started off with theatre, moving on to assisting Prahlad Kakkar and was even cast in some advertisements.
And when Prateik flaunted his muscles in Kiran Rao’s Dhobhi Ghat, he won more praise than Aamir Khan who also had a role in the film.
Prateik’s Bollywood career can be defined as a colourful spectrum of characters. In his recent release My Friend Pinto, he plays the lead role of Pinto. “My character is called Michael Pinto, he is a musician. Coming from Goa, he is a simple boy with good intentions and is fond of cakes baked by his mother. He is cute, funny, comical and so clumsy that he tumbles all over the place and breaks stuff,” he says.
Kalki Koechlin played the leading lady in the movie and the Prateik-Kalki pair was something of an experiment. “Kalki is incredulously talented and very gorgeous. She is a fun-loving girl and she loved to pull my leg all the time during the shoots. She has troubled me a lot and for this I am not going to pardon her (laughs). And her Hindi is much better than mine, I swear. But we were comfortable speaking in English. In the film we share very good chemistry,” adds Prateik.
The young actor even promoted his film in a college. We ask him if this was a new strategy and he says, “Yeah, I decided to promote my film in one of the colleges in Mumbai because I always bunked college. In fact I never went to college and was a bad student and never liked to study (smiles). I’m a very bad example for a student. And now I am missing that, so to make up for my follies committed then, I chose the college atmosphere.”
Being the son of the late Smita Patil, Prateik always faces questions about his mother. When we ask him whether he was tired of repeatedly talking about her, he says, “I am lucky to have been born to Smita Patil. Why should I feel fed up of remembering mom? I may not have seen her but she is very close to my heart. I have heard a lot about her from Shabana aunt who used to visit me a lot when I was small. She is like my mom. Also she is the one who gave me the award at the Soparkar dance show. I have seen my mother’s photos and movies. I was brought up by my maternal grandparents and they have told me stories about mom. Hearing all that from everyone, I feel I know my mom very well. After all, blood does matter.”
Recently, Prateik decided to drop his last name, Babbar, in an effort to end associations with Raj Babbar. With no regrets or explanations he says, “Well! That’s fine. Few things happen and we have nothing in store to say.”
This, however, had angered elder brother Arya Babbar who had said that such actions were insulting for his father and the family. “Well, I do not know where such stories come from. Actually they are all media created stories, there is no truth to it,” says Prateik.
Arya had also raised the subject of Prateik getting close to the Bachchans after doing a movie with them. “While working with Amitabh sir in Aarakshan I would sit and watch him act and keep learning many things. He is so humble and down to earth. He has no airs, in fact he was the first one to come and talk to me. However, I was nervous but he made me so comfortable. Not only me, whoever works with the Bachchans acknowledges their humility, and so did I.”
Being new in the industry, we ask Prateik about his friends in the field. “I have a few friends from the industry; most of my friends are from before my movie days. My bosom friends would always tease me that I was girlish. But now since I have pumped up my muscles, they have stopped calling me girlish,” he says with a smile.
Prateik now wants to do an item number. “I am anxiously awaiting a chance to be an item boy. However, I have a sexy number in Aarakshan, Ek Mauka De De Meri Jaan. Given a chance to sizzle like Aamir Khan in Delhi Belly, I will give it my best shot,” he concludes.

Sanskriti Media & Entertainment