Posts tagged band stand

News is that Deepika Padukone is looking for a new place. “Yes, I am looking to shift soon, and am looking forward to meeting my new neighbours,” the actress admits. Ask anyone living in big metros like Delhi and Mumbai, and they’ll say that good neighbours are a boon. But do celebs think like that too? And what if celebs were your neighbours? Would you want to get to know them, or flaunt the fact?

“People in Delhi live flat – but in Mumbai, we’re already one on top of the other,” laughs adman Prahlad Kakar, who has famous personalities as neighbours in Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Sachin Tendulkar. So, how does it feel? “When Aishwarya was here, every Sunday I used to be busy doing ‘Sunday devotion’,” Prahlad says. “I’d keep going up and down the lift hoping she’d want to go somewhere so that I could then walk with her to the car and see her off with a hug.”

Actor Purab Kohli says of celeb neighbours, “I live in Bandra, and Bandra is known to be ‘the’ place for celebrities. But in my building, there are no celebrities. However, Salman Khan resides pretty close and people queue up to see him. Every Sunday, especially, it is like a mela outside Salman’s house. Also in the vicinity is Shah Rukh Khan’s house at Band Stand. There, too, you have people standing outside to wave to him.”

And does Deepika prefer a rush outside her house? She sidesteps the question, saying, “In a normal neighbourhood, you bump into your neighbours every day, and the ambience is very different. In the evenings, the kids are playing, the men go out for a walk, and the women are chatting. But in a celeb neighbourhood, everyone is busy. Currently, my immediate neighbours are photographer Ashok Salian and Kunal Kohli. I’m friendly with all the people who live here.”

But, in celeb neighbourhoods, do they meet as do people in other neighbourhoods? Says Prahlad, “Yes, they do come for the occasional building meetings, etc, but they pretty much want privacy and everyone respects that. Sometimes we do have get-togethers. When Sachin did that major centuries thing, we threw a small bash for him. And when Ash got married, we got together to congratulate her.” Does he miss her? “She comes to visit her parents, and the liftman, the minute he sees her, calls me to say, ‘Sir, aapki Sunday duty aa gayi,” he laughs!

Deepika says, “My alltime favourite neighbourhood has to be the one I grew up in, in Bengaluru. It was a small complex, just about 12 flats. We were almost like a family, and I’d keep running in and out of my friends’ houses all day. Even today, it is like that. When I go to visit my parents, my friends, we’re all like one big family.”