The Manali mansion of Kangana Ranaut designed by Shabnam Gupta is where the actress is her real self–and which, inadvertently, is the ultimate party house
It’s 5.30am on the tarmac at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport and I’m about to nod off, when I glimpse a bus approaching the plane. Inside, there are just two people, one of whom must be Kangana, I think blearily, knowing we are on the same flight to Chandigarh, and then to Manali, to shoot her at home in the Himalayas. I watch her stylist fix her hair inside, just before her dramatic exit from the now incongruous bus. She ascends the stairs with her hands in her pockets, wearing a green fur coat and a matching Hermès Kelly, channelling Victoria Beckham at Heathrow arrivals—except, no one is looking but me. It’s strangely intimidating.
I’m travelling economy, and I know from her rider that she’s in either 1A or 1F, so there’s no possibility of any awkward, it’s-too-early-for-this hellos. She saves that for Chandigarh, where her bodyguard looks at me suspiciously as I approach her. When she eventually recognizes me, she has that same... kandidness, for which she is known and loved. She tells me she came to the airport straight from Olive, where she had been partying with fellow actors.
There’s more cold-shouldering when we land in Manali, and it’s got nothing to do with the weather, which is glorious. Pulling her best strut, she walks straight past me into an SUV, while her stylist gets her bags, and I wait to be invited in. I’m not; there’s a separate car for me, and we travel in convoy for two hours, winding our way up to Manali. So far, so Bollywood.
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This story is from the May - June 2018 edition of AD Architectural Digest India.
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This story is from the May - June 2018 edition of AD Architectural Digest India.
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