Fans say goodbye to Welcome’s Uday and Ballu, 15 days apart

Hindi cinema fans are mourning two losses that arrived far too close together. Mushtaq Khan, beloved as Ballu in Welcome, died on September 24 after a long battle with liver cancer. Days later, Nana Patekar, the film’s Uday Shetty, died after suffering chest pain at his Goa home. The sequence has left fans reaching for one of Bollywood’s most quoted comedies.

Khan’s business partner Shivam confirmed his death on September 24, according to details shared with India Today. The actor had been receiving treatment at Nanavati Hospital in Mumbai for about 15 days. He was first diagnosed with cancer nearly five years ago, and the illness had recently returned.

Patekar’s final hours were described by Dr Shekhar Salkar, Chief of Oncology at Manipal Hospital. Around 2:30 am, Patekar told a friend he felt uncomfortable and had pain on the left side of his chest. When the friend arrived, the actor was sweating and gradually becoming unconscious. He was taken to hospital but did not survive.

Uday and Ballu were the heart of Welcome

Released in 2007, Welcome followed Rajiv (Akshay Kumar) and Sanjana (Katrina Kaif), whose romance is complicated by her gangster brothers. For many viewers, the film belongs to Uday Shetty and his loyal man Ballu.

• Uday Shetty: loud, short-tempered and desperate to leave crime behind for a respectable life.
• Ballu: loyal, easily rattled and always close enough to Uday bhai to be pulled into the chaos.
• The broken-leg gag: Ballu claims Uday smashed his leg with a hockey stick, then praises the treatment and artificial leg he received; the film later reveals the leg was never broken.

Patekar’s aggression and Khan’s nervous reactions worked because they felt natural together. One could explode while the other panicked, and the scene was funnier for it.

Why the characters still stay with us

After so many years, fans do not simply remember Nana Patekar and Mushtaq Khan. They remember Uday bhai and Ballu as if they were real people from their circle.

Ballu is waiting for Uday bhai in heaven

A fan wrote that line on X on Thursday, and it has become a shared way to grieve. The film, its jokes and its dialogues remain part of everyday fan language. For a generation that grew up quoting Uday’s outrage and Ballu’s excuses, the timing is hard to process. The grief is for the performers, but also for the world they built together.

Source: India Today