Mukesh Ambani, the chairman of the Reliance Industries, was ranked 13th rickest man in the world on Forbes World's Billionaire list of 2019 having worth of 50 billion dollars. He also recently became the first Indian to enter the global top 10 richest billionaire list complied by Hurun Research. But it would be surprising for most of the people to know that the 13th rickest man in the world, who lives in a luxurious 2 billion dollar home, Antilia, once lived in a chawl in a tiny room along with 8-9 more members of his family.
In an old interview with Simi Garewal, Mukesh Ambani walked down the memory lane to describe how it was growing up and living in a joint family in a chawl in Mumbai. During the conversation, Mukesh said that living at the Jai Hind Estate, the chawl in Bhuleshwar, is the first memory that he would always preserve in life. He was a just 4-5 year old boy at that time.
It was not something that Mukesh would want to get away with that. In fact, he said that they all felt secured and absolutely happy living in the chawl at that point of their life.
Dwelling further into his second most treasured memory was dealing with the toughness of his father Dhirubhai Ambani while growing up. "One evening, we had guests and I would be 10 or 11 years old and Anil would be 9 years old. Both of us, misbehaved to the T. We would do all funny things what kids would do. My mother (Kokilaben Ambani) would bring food for the guests and before the guests could have it, all food would be eaten up by us. And my father patiently said, "OK! Sit down" but we were like really in our own world. And these were people who were coming at our home for the first time and we would jumping from one sofa to another. And generally we were having a good time oblivious of all the guests," Mukesh had recalled.
He continued, "Next morning my father called us and said, "Mukesh! Anil! Both of you out here. From today onwards, for the next two days you are going to stay in the garage unless you learn to behave yourselves. And you repent, you are not going to come up. My mother pleaded to him saying they are poor little boys. We really spent two days in the garage on merely water and roti. And that made us repent and also bonded the two brothers.
