The first edition of Sit With Hitlist held outside midday office-studio with Saif Ali Khan. For, besides a superstar, Saif is also a ‘Nawab’. And when the Nawab summons, well, you show up!
You get called the ‘Nawab’, which inheritance-wise, you are [of Pataudi]. But the fact is you’re actually a self-made actor, having taken nothing from parents, ever since you moved to Bombay, at 20!
Yes, thank you. I’ve learnt that you cannot argue against narratives — whether or not they’re true. People have a certain fixed notion. For that matter, even [with] Pataudi [palace], when my father [Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi] died, it got rented to Neemrana Hotels. Aman [Nath] and Francis [Wacziarg] used to run [the hotel]. Francis passed away. He’d said that if I wanted [the palace] back, I could let him know. I said: I want it back. They held a conference, and said, okay, you have to give us lots of money!
Right.
Which I then consequently earned. So, even the house I’m supposed to have inherited has been earned back through money from films. You can’t live off the past. At least we can’t in our family, because there was nothing. There is history, culture, beautiful photographs; and, of course, some land. It has been a privileged upbringing. But there’s been no inheritance.
You moved to a rented apartment in Bombay, is that how it worked?
I was born and even raised in Bombay. My father lived with my mother in her [Carmichael Road] flat; I went to Cathedral, spent time in Bombay Gym — in a world more influenced by my father’s, than films.
He had just finished playing cricket. His last Test series was when I was four/five. My mother [actor Sharmila Tagore] says he was bunking his responsibilities. His mother was looking after things in Bhopal and Pataudi. She’d got old. So we moved to Delhi to live with her.
It was a nice, big old house in Delhi, which she had been given for her lifetime, in return for land, property and other kinds of deals that these old [royal] families had made with the Indian government.
