She Passed the Building and Felt It All Over Again
There’s a stretch of Carter Road that looks like every other upscale Mumbai address now. Gleaming tower, glass facade, the kind of lobby that smells like imported marble and new money. Residents park their cars and go about their evenings without giving much thought to what stood there before.
Mumtaz thinks about it every time she passes.
In a recent conversation with journalist Vickey Lalwani, the veteran actress said something that stopped me in my tracks. She called Aashirwad a monument. Not a bungalow. Not a piece of prime Bandra real estate. A monument. And the way she said it, you could tell she wasn’t reaching for a dramatic word. She genuinely meant it. Still means it, years after the building came down and a high-rise went up in its place.
For anyone who needs the history: Aashirwad was Rajesh Khanna’s home on Carter Road. India’s first superstar bought it from fellow screen legend Rajendra Kumar sometime in the late sixties, rebuilt it in the eighties, and lived there until he died in July 2012. The name itself, Aashirwad, means blessing. He picked that himself and seemed to mean it every bit as literally as the word implies.
Back in 2009, Khanna actually spoke on record about wanting the bungalow turned into a museum after his time. He said it plainly: “Aashirwad is the home of the first superstar of Bollywood, and I would like it to remain that way.” He even added a line about his daughters Twinkle and Rinke being settled and not needing the property. The man had a plan. Or at least, he had a wish.
The wish didn’t survive the family’s decision-making process.
In 2014, the bungalow was sold for around Rs 90 crore to businessman Shashi Kiran Shetty. Two years after that, it was demolished. A residential tower now stands in its place. And Mumtaz, who spent many afternoons in that house, who knew its rooms and its warmth and the people inside it, said the whole thing still confuses her. She mentioned Akshay Kumar specifically, as Rajesh Khanna’s son-in-law, wondering quietly why no one stepped in to make the museum idea real. Not with venom. More like the way you wonder about something years later and still can’t quite land on a satisfying answer.
She had her own relationship with that house, which is maybe why it hits differently for her. Her sister Malika’s home was close by on Carter Road, the one that had previously belonged to Meena Kumari. So Mumtaz was in the neighbourhood constantly. She was a regular at Aashirwad, and in those visits, it was Anju Mahendru who made her feel welcome. Anju, who had loved Rajesh Khanna through the late sixties and into the early seventies, who ran that household, who was, as Mumtaz put it without flinching: a wife without the marriage certificate.
She managed the home, she looked after him, she hosted guests. Mumtaz remembered the warmth of it. The ease. Whatever complicated feelings surrounded those relationships, inside those walls there was a kind of family.
Rajesh Khanna, she also noted, had his habits. The lateness was legendary on set. If you were working with Kaka, you factored in the delay and moved on. But she was quick to balance that. Once he showed up, he worked. He gave it everything. The craft was never where he cut corners. Only the clock.
There’s something about all of this that goes beyond one actress missing one house. Mumbai has been eating its own history for decades. Plots get sold. Buildings come down. The economics make sense on paper even when they feel wrong in practice. But Aashirwad carried something specific. It was a place that Rajesh Khanna himself wanted preserved. He said so publicly. And the fact that it became luxury apartments instead of a museum, that it’s now just an address again instead of a landmark, feels like a particular kind of cultural carelessness.
Mumtaz still drives that stretch of road sometimes. Still feels it when she passes. She said it hurts.
No performance in that. No flourish. Just a woman who knew the place when it was alive, and still notices every time she’s reminded it isn’t anymore.
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Sana has been covering film, fame, and everything in between for over a decade. From red carpets to rehab rumors, she brings nuance, wit, and an insider’s edge to every story. When she’s not reporting, she’s probably watching Koffee With Karan reruns or doom-scrolling celebrity IG feeds.
