Pankaj Tripathi doesn’t have a microwave at home, was against installing an AC but his wife insisted: ‘The biggest fights we’ve had…’

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She said that stardom hasn’t changed him one bit, and that he still roams around in khaadi clothes. “He sometimes jokes that he’s a star now, and should be treated with some respect. I give him one stern look and he shuts up,” she said with a laugh. But she admitted that they would have major fights over the use of plastic. “He’s environmentally conscious, so he would keep telling me not to buy plastic containers at the market. He doesn’t know how to run a house; we can’t just live off one kind of daal and some rice. We need containers! We would have massive fights about buying plastic containers. These were the happiest moments of my life,” she said.

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Mridula said that their friends are surprised by the lack of amenities at their home. “We still don’t have a microwave, can you believe it? He believes they emit waves that are harmful. If we have to heat food, we do it on the stove. No microwaves. We have fought over installing an air conditioner in our bungalow! Our house in the city has a lot of cross-ventilation, so it was never a big problem there. But in the bungalow, it’s humid. We’ve fought so much about this. One day, he was sitting quietly and sweating, and that’s when I told him, ‘Want to get that AC now?’ And he agreed.”

Mridula now works as her husband’s manager, which, she said, is a job that she had to learn the hard way. They’ve been married since 2004, and have a daughter. He was last seen in a supporting role in the blockbuster film Stree 2, headlined by Rajkummar Rao and Shraddha Kapoor.