Jackie Shroff was already an established star before he moved out of the Mumbai chawl he grew up in. He said in a new interview that he lived in the chawl for 33 years, which is why his language and diction is still so rooted in that part of Mumbai. But during the initial phase of his career, when he was still living in the chawl despite having made it in the movies, he was given special privileges by his neighbours, which included an entire toilet all to himself. Jackie told actor Mukesh Khanna in an interview on the actor's YouTube channel that there were three shared toilets in his chawl, and every morning, a queue would form outside. But when he became famous, one toilet was reserved just for him. "Producers would come and sit on two boxes that we'd arranged as a meeting place. One box in the middle was our table. You could see Marine Drive in front, my house in the back, and my bathroom on the side," Jackie said about his initial years in the movie business. He continued, "There were three toilets for seven households. And the households were big, more than 30 people. And in the mornings, queues would form. But I had to rush for shooting. They used to tell me to 'tham, tham (stop)'. But when my movies became hits, they gave me a private 'sandas'. I told them that it will become difficult for them, with 34 people. But they insisted, because they were proud of what I'd done, and they even offered to lock the toilet when I wasn't around. It was so embarrassing in the mornings, I would tell people to use my toilet after me, but they'd refuse. They used to continue standing in queues." Jackie has often spoken warmly about his youth in the Teen Patti locality of Mumbai. In a viral video, he spoke about how his mother would immediately know if he'd fallen ill, because they were living in such a cramped space. But when the moved to a larger house, walls came between them, and Jackie didn't realise his mother had died in the next room until the morning.
