Shashi Kapoor, wife Jennifer woke up on their wedding night to find 2 strangers in the room, recalls son Kunal: ‘Prithviraj Kapoor’s home was a hostel’

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‘Prithviraj Kapoor’s cook lost her entire family in partition’

Kunal also shared that the house’s cook, Tara Bai, was a refugee who had lost her entire family during Partition, but Prithviraj Kapoor gave her employment and helped her rebuild her life in India. “Tara Bai came to my grandfather, and he said, ‘What can you do?’ She had lost her husband. She had lost her family. She told him that she can cook. So, she made her own tandoor and she cooked for the whole street. I think she was the early pioneer of portable tandoors because she had come to the house with a tandoor and made these most divine naans.”

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‘Shashi Kapoor had a suite in a Kolkata hotel where he proposed to his wife’

Late legendary actor Prithviraj Kapoor with son Shashi Kapoor. (Photo: Express Archives)

Kunal was asked about Shashi Kapoor’s fondness for Kolkata’s Fairlawn Hotel and how he eventually had his own suite there. Explaining the history behind it, Kunal said, “My father eventually had a suite there, not initially. The chances are that Karan and I were possibly conceived there.”

Kunal went on to share how his father proposed to his mother at the same hotel. “The first time when my father asked my mother out, he was in the hotel because that’s where they met. They met in Kolkata. My mother was staying at the hotel with her parents, and my dad went to the hotel to ask her out for a date and years went by, and they kept staying there. They got married. I’m sure I was conceived there.”

Shashi Kapoor with wife Jennifer.

He added, “When the film 36 Chowringhee Lane (which starred Kendal and Shashi in lead roles) was being shoot. The entire unit everybody stayed at that hotel.”

Sharing how the hotel’s old waiters still treated Shashi Kapoor like a 17-year-old boy despite him being a married man, Kunal said, “Everytime they went to Kolkata, he only stayed at that hotel. The old waiters would still call him Shashi Baba and they would shout at him if he wad not at the table on time, you know, they would tell him because they still treat him like a 17-year-old, which was nice.”