Rajesh Khanna Bought His 'Ashirwad' Bungalow For Rs 3.5 Lakh, Know The Staggering Price It Was Sold For

Rajesh Khanna bought his iconic bungalow, Aashirwad, for ₹3.5 lakh from another superstar.

Rajesh Khanna lived like a king in his Ashirwad bungalow.

Source : IMDb

In the 1960s, Mumbai’s Carter Road in Bandra was a quiet, unassuming stretch — nothing like the celebrity-packed, high-profile hub it is today. Back then, the area was largely home to Parsi and Anglo-Indian families. Nestled along the seafront was a bungalow that stood out — in a dilapidated state. No one wanted to touch it, even at a throwaway price.

How Rajendra Kumar Bought This Bandra Bungalow

Veteran journalist Ali Peter John, Rajesh Khanna's close friend who closely followed his career, once recalled in an article how the property remained unsold for years, until it caught the attention of a struggling actor who was just finding his footing in the Hindi film industry — Rajendra Kumar. Enchanted by the idea of living in a sea-facing bungalow, he was determined to buy it, even though he didn’t have the money at the time, according to an Indian Express Screen report.

As chronicled in Seema Sonik Alimchand’s book Jubilee Kumar: The Life and Times of a Superstar, the bungalow was priced at Rs 65,000, but Rajendra Kumar only had Rs 10,000 on him. "I immediately signed a cheque for Rs 10,000 and sent it to the broker. Now I had to pay fifty-five thousand more, which I didn’t have in my account,” the actor was quoted as saying in the book, as reported by Screen. He went to famous filmmaker BR Chopra, who had offered him two films just a few days back. Rajendra Kumar accpected both 'Dhool ka Phool' and 'Kanoon'. 

While he wanted Rs 55,000 in advance, they were not even able to reach an agreement on the payment for each film. The book mentioned how the consolidated fee being offered to Rajendra Kumar was not acceptable to him. He had been apparently offered Rs 1,50,000, but he wanted Rs 2 lakh. Kumar reportedly went up to Chopra then and told him to intervene and finalise the amount as he had reached an impasse with the production controller over the fee. He told the filmmaker that he was charging others Rs 1 lakh for movie, and hence should be paid Rs 2 lakh for two fims. 

"He said, ‘All right, I will pay you Rs 1,75,000 for both.’ I agreed immediately, but laid down the condition that he should pay me Rs 50,000 then and there. And the magnanimous B.R. Chopra immediately handed me the money. I paid Rs 55,000 to the owner of the bungalow on Carter Road that I had set my eyes on,” the book quotes Kumar as saying.

The actor renovated the bungalow and named it ‘Dimple’ after his newborn daughter. His fortunes changed dramatically — he went on to become a box office sensation, earning the nickname ‘Jubilee Kumar’ for delivering back-to-back silver jubilee hits. Eventually, he bought a second bungalow, which he also named Dimple.

Rajesh Khanna Buys Rajendra Kumar's Bungalow

Around this time, a new face was emerging in the film industry — Rajesh Khanna. Hearing that Rajendra Kumar was looking to sell his Carter Road bungalow, he jumped at the opportunity, hoping to inherit some of the veteran actor’s luck.

Ali Peter John, who had kept in touch with Khanna till the very end, wrote that the actor bought the bungalow for Rs 3.5 lakh. However, he couldn’t keep the name ‘Dimple’. Rajendra Kumar reportedly told him to change the name because Dimple was my daughter’s name. 

Khanna renamed the house Aashirwad, and indeed, his fortunes soared. In his book, 'Dark Star: The Loneliness of Being Rajesh Khanna, Gautam Chintamani has detailed how the home became a symbol of his stardom. Khanna famously held his "durbar" at the bungalow and made producers wait outside for an indefinite time.

He reportedly had a chair placed a little higher than the other ones in the room to "differentiate between the king and his subjects", according to the book. 

"Inside, copious amounts of whisky would flow endlessly through the night and those present would sing praises of King Kaka… Those who didn’t agree with him or presented a somewhat contrarian point of view even for the sake of argument, were often shown the door. The manner in which Khanna supposedly banished people from his court was nothing less than high theatrics; he would weigh the words that didn’t meet his approval and proclaim, ‘Aapko humara durbar chhodna padega’.”

However, as Amitabh Bachchan rose to superstardom, Rajesh Khanna’s career began to decline. In the later part of his life, Ali Peter John wrote, he spent most of his time in his Linking Road office, "going home only to sleep in a tiny bedroom in a corner”.

Rajesh Khanna passed away in 2012. After his death, Aashirwad was reportedly sold for a staggering Rs 90 crore. The iconic bungalow was eventually demolished, and a high-rise now stands in its place — marking the end of a chapter in Bollywood’s dramatic history.