Prateik Smita Patil has changed his last name many times in the last decade. A few weeks ago, he had revealed in public that he has chosen to go with the name Prateik Smita Patil after discussing with his wife, Priya Banerjee.
In a recent interview, Prateik Smita Patil revealed a custody battle ensued after his birth between his father Raj Babbar and Smita Patil’s family to decide upon his last name. Smita Patil died soon after his birth.
“It wasn’t even Smita, so growing up I was ‘Prateik Smit Babbar’. In school, everyone thought I was Christian because they would wonder ‘why Smit?’, no one cared for Babbar. Everyone just called me Smit.”
Prateik made a lasting impression in his debut film Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na. In that film, he was credited as ‘Prateik Babbar’ but subsequently, he went with just ‘Prateik’ for a few years.
“In my first film, my name was Prateik Babbar and then the devil got the better of me and I started thinking ‘Kaun hai maa? Kaun hai baap? (Who is mom? Who is dad?)’ Then I started thinking, ‘I don’t want to be Patil, I don’t want to be Babbar. I want to be just Prateik.’ For a few films, I was only Prateik because I was bitter about my parents. I was like, I don’t want to belong to them. They have only given me trauma my entire life. I don’t want to belong to them and then I continued with Prateik,” he said.
Sharing the thought behind settling with the name Prateik Smita Patil, he said, “I had to embrace that name, it makes me complete. Now, I am complete, I feel complete. Priya said ‘Prateik, you owe it to her, she gave her life for you, you owe that, you are her son’ and that hit different. I was like ‘this is who I have to be’.”
Prateik is known for acting in films like Dhobi Ghat, Baaghi 2, Mulk, Mitron, Chhichhore, to name a few.
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