Did You Know: Chawl To Riches - Stories From Bollywood
Did you know that the Chawls in Mumbai have figured in numerous movies and that it produced many Bollywood celebrities?
Chawl, a cluster of houses facing each other lined up across the floor in a building offers a glimpse of the way middle-class families lived in much of India in the last century before gated colonies came in vogue. Did you know that the Chawls in Mumbai have figured in numerous movies and that it produced many Bollywood celebrities?
Did you know that the chawl experience is integral to the rags-to-riches stories of many Bollywood stars, writers and directors? A chawl depicts urban community living, be it in good-neighbour fashion or clashes and quarrels over issues that govern the day-to-day lives of its dwellers. Thus, you have people having community functions where young budding talents are born. Or, impatient people lined up to fetch water supply for the family or outside a cluster of toilets.
Bhagwan Dada, the star of the 1950s and 1960s, when he fell on bad days, returned to his chawl home, where he died. So did Tun Tun, the comedian, when she had no support.
Jeetendra lived in a chawl till V Shantram gave him a break in Geet Gaya Pattharone. At least two of the senior Bollywood stars are products of chawl and are proud of it. They continued to live there even after becoming busy stars, till they made enough money to buy swank suburban homes for exclusive living.
Film-maker Manmohan Desai made many hit films like Dharmaveer and Amar, Akbar Antony, lived out of his home in a chawl in south Bombay. He was known to play cricket with youngsters on its terrace. The story has it that he jumped off the terrace and committed suicide.
In his early years, Amol Palekar would invite reporters home for interviews. At least one reporter talked to him while he was in just the pyjama, his bare torso trying to cope with Mumbai’s sweltering summer.
Actor and style icon Jackie Shroff was essentially a chawl product and was proud and nostalgic, both about his home in Teen Batti locality. In one of his recent interviews, he recalled how he would stand in long toilet queues. It was embarrassing having to wait his turn each morning. This continued even as he thrived as a Dev Anand discovery, acting opposite his idol, and serenading pretty heroines. He got a private toilet only he made it big in the movies.
Thrilled that they had a star amidst them, neighbours would allow Jackie to jump the queue and eventually, allow him the exclusive use of one of the toilets. It was from his chawl home that Jackie, known as Jaggu to his neighbours, began as a model. His father was an astrologer, but it was his mother who predicted that her son would become a big star one day.
Perhaps, the only saving grace, Jackie recalls, was that his modest home was overlooking the sea. Producers would come and sit on two boxes and the third in the middle served as the table. So, there was Marine Drive in front, his house forming the backdrop and a bathroom on the side.
Did You Know that Vicky Kaushal, now rich and serenading wife Katrina Kaif, began life in a chawl? His family lived in a 10 x 10 room with a common toilet. His father Sham Kaushal, a cancer survivor, made it big as a fight master in Bollywood, paving the way for Vicky to take to acting.
Among the actresses, Marathi-Hindi star Priya Bapat spent her first 25 years in a chawl even as she worked with Sanjay Dutt, Raju Hirani in Munnabhai MBBS and with Mammootty. Only stardom and marriage took her out of the chawl.
