His Service

Late 1980s – 1991

Three years with the Maratha Light Infantry

To write, direct and act in Prahaar: The Final Attack (1991), a film about an Army commando, he did not just study the part. He trained with the Maratha Light Infantry for about three years. After that training he was given an honorary rank in the Territorial Army.

1999

Kargil: asking to serve

When the Kargil war broke out, he asked to join the troops at the front. Senior officers first said no, so he went to the Defence Minister, George Fernandes, and pointed to his three years of training. He was given permission.

He was posted along the Line of Control. Reports place him in sectors including Dras, Kupwara, Baramulla and Sopore. He served with a unit's Quick Reaction Team and helped at an Army hospital. He lost a great deal of weight during the posting and rarely spoke about it as anything special.

Later years

Standing with families near the border

When cross-border shelling hit villages in Rajouri and Poonch in Jammu & Kashmir, he travelled there himself to hand out relief material to the families affected.

2015

The Naam Foundation

As drought and debt drove farmers in Marathwada to suicide, he and fellow actor Makarand Anaspure began meeting the families. They gave widows and children direct financial help. At one event alone, 113 families from Latur and Osmanabad districts each received a cheque of ₹15,000.

What started as two actors writing cheques became the Naam Foundation. He refused credit for the money people sent in. In his words, the two actors were just postmen.

2016 onwards

Water, not just relief

The foundation saw that the root cause was water. It moved from emergency help to long-term work: reviving rivers, desilting dams, building percolation tanks and farm ponds across drought-prone Marathwada and Vidarbha. Banks and companies joined in through their CSR programmes.