Click here to follow Screen Digital on YouTube and stay updated with the latest from the world of cinema.
© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Shah Rukh Khan lives with his wife Gauri and their three children in Mannat, a massive sea-facing bungalow in Mumbai. The house is also a tourist attraction, with thousands of SRK’s fans making their way to Bandstand to take pictures outside Mannat, or, if they’re lucky, catch a glimpse of the star himself. At the launch event for Gauri’s new coffee table book My Life in Design, Shah Rukh spoke about when they bought the property, and how painstakingly they’ve transformed it into a home.
Shah Rukh said that when they first bought Mannat, it was beyond their means. He said, “Being from Delhi, one was used to living in bungalows. One did not realise that Mumbai has its own system, where apartments are even more expensive… We are not used to it, not because I was very well off, but because in Delhi, everybody seemed to have a bungalow.” Shah Rukh said that their first house wasn’t too far from Mannat, and it was lent to them by a director.
He continued, “We didn’t have too much money, and as soon as we mustered up some money, we said we want to buy this bungalow. And it was way beyond our means. We managed to buy it, which was one thing, and then we had to rebuild it, because it was quite dilapidated. And then we didn’t have money to furnish it. Of course, we called a designer. The lunch that he served us telling us how he’ll design the house was way more than the salary I used to earn in a month.”
Shah Rukh said that the designer was clearly unaffordable, and that’s how Mannat became Gauri’s first project as a designer. He also said that his favourite room in the house is a library. “Contrary to the popular belief that I spend most of my time in the bathroom, I like my library the most. It’s the section of the house which is kind of my office, it doesn’t have any electronics. It’s a library, I like sitting in it. It’s been long since I’ve read the books in it, but it just feels very intellectual and smart.”
While Gauri’s book includes many never-before-seen pictures of Mannat, Shah Rukh also gave an idea of what the household is like. He said, “We have dinners at home, we don’t have a choice in that. We have to have dinner together. And on those dinners, we discuss how everybody’s day at work was. At the end of the dinner, the discussion is, ‘It was a satisfying day’. Because she believes a satisfying day is a happy day.”
Click here to follow Screen Digital on YouTube and stay updated with the latest from the world of cinema.
