4 minutes of readingChennaiFebruary 2, 2026 15:59 IST
Hindi film industry veterans Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar He recently shared a glimpse of his Khandala mansion for the first time with Farah Khan. Javed is Farah’s uncle, as he was married to her maternal aunt, his first wife, Honey Irani. In Farah’s vlog, Javed also spoke about experiencing luxury after years of struggle. remembering how he once slept on the trails and even starved for two or three days.
Inside Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar’s huge Khandala bungalow
The house opens onto an extensive garden surrounded by tall, leafy trees. The garden is tastefully decorated with marble statues and has a fountain in the center. From the outside, the home leads into a huge foyer with a high wooden ceiling, instantly giving the space a quaint English bungalow feel. The interiors are adorned with antique furniture, adding to its old-world charm.
Inside Javed Akhtar and Shabana Azmi’s Khandala house. (Photo: Farah Khan/YT)
Farah then takes viewers inside the couple’s living room, which is filled with artifacts collected by Shabana and Javed during their travels around the world. Javed jokingly comments that some of the artifacts could be as old as Farah Khan herself. The spacious living room opens to large doors and windows, perfectly bringing the outside inside. Farah also showed off the couple’s huge wooden dining table.
Inside Javed Akhtar and Shabana Azmi’s Khandala house. (Photo: Farah Khan/YT)
Inside Javed Akhtar and Shabana Azmi’s Khandala house. (Photo: Farah Khan/YT)
Javed Akhtar slept on the trails and went hungry for three days
Shabana shared that the couple bought the property 15 years ago and that a 150-year-old tree on the land immediately caught their attention, prompting them to purchase it. However, she revealed that she and Javed had completely different ideas about the type of house they wanted to build. Talking about the same, he said, “I was thinking of converting this into a weekend cabin, when I came to know that he is building a luxurious bungalow here. We used to fight daily over this. But his best friend told me, ‘Javed Akhtar is Sholay and you are Ankur, both of you will never meet and you have to leave Ankur and let him do Sholay’. I stopped fighting after that.”
Farah Khan also spoke about how during Javed Akhtar’s difficult days, he would sometimes sleep on footpaths and go hungry for days. She asked him how it feels to now own such a luxurious property. Replying to Sam, he said, “Sometimes I wonder if this is happening to me. Only those people who have nothing in life have a fantasy. I wrote the poem Bhook when I didn’t eat for three days in a row.” He added: “You can live in big houses in your life, but there is always that little room in your life that you always remember.”
Shabana Azmi talks about sharing a bathroom with eight families
Not just Akhtar, Shabana Azmi also comes from a modest background before making it big in the film industry. Sharing details about his early life, he said: “I come from a modest family. I used to live in a communist party commune. It had eight small rooms and eight families lived in each of those rooms. And the eight families shared a bathroom and a toilet between them. I stayed there until I was nine and then we moved to Bombay.”