Journalism of Courage
Akshay Kumar started from scratch when he first made his way into the movies and almost three decades later, the actor has seen many highs and lows in his career as an actor and producer. In a recent interview, the Mission Raniganj actor spoke about his life before he made it into films and shared fond memories of his humble beginnings. Akshay spent a large part of his childhood in Delhi, before moving to Mumbai, and said that he lived with 24 of his family members in a small house in Chandni Chowk.
“We were 24 people living in the same house in Chandni Chowk. We all would sleep in the same room. In the morning, when we woke up for exercise, everyone would jump over each other to get out,” he told ANI. Akshay then shared that even after he moved to Mumbai with his family, they lived in a small house in Sion Koliwada where they paid Rs 100 as rent.
Akshay recalled that despite living within limited means, they were always happy with each other. “I swear to God, there wasn’t a single day where we did not smile or laugh. Now, that we have money, sometimes we feel a bit sad but at that time, there was nothing to be sad about, We would have dal chawal, jeera aloo, aloo gobhi, bhindi, we would eat all of this and we were happy,” he shared.
The Mission Raniganj actor then shared that his family had a ritual of going to the movies every Saturday and they would skip the morning meal on the day so they could save money for the movie ticket. “We would miss our meal in the morning to save money for the ticket,” he shared and added that they would each get a samosa and an ice cream during the movie.
He recalled another anecdote from those days and said that he failed his seventh standard and had to repeat the year. Upon learning this, his father came to hit him. He held him and asked, “Tu banna kya chahta hai? (What do you want to be?)” Akshay said that even though he had no intention of becoming a movie actor at the time, he just blurted out “Hero banna chahta hun (I want to be a hero).” The OMG 2 actor said that he wanted to actually become a martial arts teacher at the time but just said the hero bit out of nowhere.
Akshay Kumar’s Mission Raniganj is currently in theatres.
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