I remember being all of 5 when I headed to watch my first movie in a cinema hall and that was Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham. I don't know if it was because of my first cinematic experience or the fact that because of the exposure I had to the movie, it has unearthed the perpetual drama digger in me, I absolutely love that movie. I remember humming dekha tumko jabse haye dekha tumko yaara the next day I was in school. I am not an entirely Bollywoody child, but this movie represents everything Bollywood for me. There has never been a time when my mom or I didn't watch K3G when it came on TV. We just loooooooooooved the songs and Hrithik Roshan. Also the song It's Raining Men, the song I have known as the Poo song for 14 years of my life, is a legendary song in my playlist. I know most of the dialogues by heart. My best friend and I have spent many a drunken nights enacting Poo much to the chagrin of the other friends who have hung out with us. And at that tender age of 5 I fell in love with Karan Johar as a director. I didn't like it when people called him things and I kinda defended him to people who judged him.

Besides, if you don't like Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, I am sorry, we can't be friends.

Apart from K3G I have obviously watched other films of his, loved them (but not as much as K3G) and adored his show Koffee With Karan. Karan Johar was like a PowerPuff Man to me. He was sugar and spice and everything nice. Still is though. So how can I not read the book this man has written?

This book was released in 2016, but here I am reading it in 2020, and thankful for it because it talks about certain aspects of life in the simplest of terms but it calls for a level of maturity as well. And the fact that whatever he has written resonated with me so well makes me love him all the more.

He is incredibly unabashed in the book. He bares himself open. Some may think it is dramatic. But I love drama and drama sells. He talks about some very basic human emotions we all deny just to prove that we are better than what we actually know of ourselves. Deep down these thoughts are lurking in the murky waters of your mind but you refuse to acknowledge them and they include :

1. Being J. 
Everyone faces the dirty green J at some point or the other. Either you are the one who is jealous or there is someone who is jealous of you. And we do not want to accept the fact that WE are jealous of someone, but very readily point fingers at others and say "Oh he/she is so jealous of me, God!"
KJo says that he was jealous of Farhan Akhtar because he was getting the tag of being a cool director while making movies like Dil Chahta Hain and all that. It's OK really. You can be jealous and when you say it out loud, it kinda feels cathartic.

2. The feeling of not belonging anywhere.
You are with a bunch of hip and happening peeps who smoke weed and do drugs and do each other. You feel this is the hour of the need and you do it, but you don't connect with them. You don't feel like you belong with them. You love Bollywood movies but you are hanging out with a gang of people who discuss world cinema with you, and you go like "Whaat da actual fuck are they even talking about?" but you still hang out with them to give the impression that you are cool and classy, even though you would rather pose with your dupatta flying in the air amidst some sarso ka khet if you get the chance. We all go through this feeling. This societal pressure. In fact there is a part where KJo, who is a self acknowledged Bollywood buff, tells his mother that he looked down on people who spoke Hindi and not English, in his college days. Very few people can accept their hypocrisy. Also later on in the book, he very clearly says he is not a worldly man when it comes to cinema or music. He is very desi in his choices. What's the harm really?

3. Not gathering the strength to do what we want
How many of us have been scared or anxious of doing the things we genuinely love? How many of us have made the effort to take the first step towards doing the thing we love? How many hours have we spent thinking of doing so? Well, very few people make the right decision and do it. KJo did it too.

4. And often stemming from the aforementioned lack of action, rises the feeling of being denied what we genuinely deserved. 

5. A sense of security + Also a sense of insecurity while being in a close knit nuclear family and being incredibly close to aunts. Belonging from a nuclear family myself, I totally understood what he said and how he felt close to his mother's sisters. Maternal aunts are the best. They gossip with you, they love you and they are chic too. KJo too had a bunch of super chic aunts whom he loved and admired.

6. We all dread to imagine the day of losing a parent in our lives.
We try to push the thought away to the darkest attics of our minds. But KJo brings forth that painful memory, maybe just to come to terms with it or to warn the world beforehand what the loss actually means. While you may think that his father's cremation was viewed by famous celebrities and condolences would pour into his phone from the who's who of the industry, yet take a moment and think, do the tears of famous celebrities really matter when you lose your father? Can those condolence messages of popular numbers pump in the life back into his father? So while we see celebs dressed in their well pressed pristine whites, roaming around without makeup or maybe with the slightest tinge of nude makeup and gargantuan shades to probably hide the fact that they are not really crying, nothing can take the pain away from losing a parent.

7. Next to the death of a parent, comes the death of a spouse.
A marriage which has been successful, which has seen its days of pure love, which has not succumbed to provocation of any sorts, comes apart due to the death of one of the baton bearers, it is a sad story. And the pain is probably greater than that of losing a parent. Because you have spent the better part of your life with this person, this person has been witness to all your good days and bad. To let go of this person is probably the most difficult task anyone has to ever do.

8. Marriage. An institution.
Is no longer revered. It is no longer considered to be a holy sanctity. It is more of an arrangement. People get married these days with prenups. How on earth can you get into something permanent with well prepared documents of what is going to happen when the relationship falls? It is like as if you are almost hoping that either one of you drops out of this in the long run. You cannot get something permanent if your attitude of holding onto it is transient. Some may say it is a practical thought. I honestly think it is a rotten thought. 8 out of every 10 couples around us are divorced, and the remaining 2 are probably planning on it. Giving up is so easy, but making it last is so difficult. Of course things flatline, and there are opportunities of looking askance in every nook and corner, but are those opportunities really worth it? People around us are separating left, right and centre and now we turn a blind eye and give a patent reply of "Well, you know this thing happens all the time. I am sure you are gonna find someone better, someone you deserve." You know you don't give two bits about who gets what. We are accustomed to the fact that people separate and yet there are people like us who are growing commitment phobic day by day thinking that what if the other person doesn't invest in the relationship as much as I do, and thus the quest to find the right person continues with a skeptic heart. And KJo actually questions his belief on marriage when he sees most of the people he knows, separating. And then he says that he isn't in the best position to judge because he himself has never tied the knot, and so he just acts as a sooth-sayer to whoever tells him of his/her spouse woes.

9. His take on marriage and singledom, makes me wanna remain single for the rest of my life, but I also need to have a plethora of friends who will bitch with me, eat ice cream with me and not make me regret singlehood.

10. How in India one cannot even have an affair, be it legit or illegit, under the prying noses of people you know, because they are there in every cafe, mall or traffic signal even. So it seems you have to go abroad even to love, and not just to get higher education or work.

11. He loves to gossip. And let's not say that it is a feminine trait in him. Men love to gossip as well OK? Just accept it.

12. The need for validation. 
We know we can't please everyone in a lifetime. But don't we have this nagging urge to be loved by all and even convert our haters to our supporters? Similarly Karan Johar too felt this need to break out from the tag of a glitz and glamour director to be someone who can deal with real world issues and so he directed My Name Is Khan. And he was successful as well. Not maybe so much in shedding of the tag of a drama director, but definitely in winning over the critics who had never showered any accolades on him so far.

13. The constant need to connect with the youth and be relevant.
Hence SOTY happened.

14. Being a private person despite loving attention.
You know how you crave attention from friends and want to be the person everyone waits for in parties to arrive? But then amidst all of that you prefer taking long walks all by yourself without bumping into anyone you know, just to collect your thoughts and enjoy a moment of solitude. Yes Karan Johar, I hear you and second you.

15. Shameless about big celebrations.
Don't lie. You love it too.

16. Friendship
He talks a lot about his friends. How some stood the test of time. How one relationship changed flavours when work got involved. How he hurt the one friend who he truly loved and how he hurt him back too, but all is well between the two right now. I really felt that when he said that because of distance creeping in, you become formal and that leads a blow to the one standing at the receiving end. Formalities in friendships are hurtful. And how one friendship turned so sour, that it never headed north ever again.

17. Work
KJo talks about his work in every stage of his life, and how he grew up to be the person he is now. Although he is the life and soul of his office, and his work peeps love him, over the years he has developed the habit of giving zero fucks and keeps his work associates at a distance from him. I kinda felt bad when I read this. I wish he would exude warmth with every person he ever works with, but I guess considering the number of people he interacts with on a regular basis, exuding warmth to each one of them would make him burst like a volcano.

No man is flawless and neither is he. He may be a harbinger of Nepotism but I guess he has freedom to work with his own choices. He wants to work with big stars and star kids, let him be. He promises entertainment. Given the kind of a man he is, he may even launch a newbie not developed from the zygote of a Bollywoody egg or Bollywoody sperm someday, just to defy the fact that he can make absolute nobodies into the stars of morrow.
To others he may be a snooty, class conscious man who refuses to mingle with the germs of other losers, and in all honesty he may be so. But for me he is always going to be first man in India who has made it cool for a man to be full of glitz, glamour and be a diva without any hindrance.