I have always had a kind of mixed feelings about Karan Johar as a filmmaker.  At this of my life, I am not a willing consumer of mainstream commercial Bollywood movies, so I generally stay away from the kind of films he’s been renowned for.  In all these years, I have only watched a couple at most.  However, it has also never stopped me from trying to find out about what movie he’s going to come out with.  You could say that even though I didn’t like the actual movie too much, I certainly admired the style and the scale of his production.  The beautiful people, the technical finesse, I mean the whole aesthetics of the enterprise.  Even otherwise, I have found him to be an intriguing personality, primarily because of all the baggage he has carried with him regarding his private life and I was always looking for the opportunity to discover more of him as people and not so much as a top tier movie maker.  When I learned that he is coming out with his autobiography, it naturally piqued my curiosity.  But at the same time, I was pretty skeptical as to how honest he would be given that he has become such a big brand and is constantly in the limelight.  Nevertheless, I picked up my copy in a perverse way thinking, “Let’s see how hypocritical he gets”.

    As I finished these 200 odd pages of this book written in collaboration with a well-known entertainment journalist and writer Poonam Saxena, the realization hit me that how wrong I was in my judgment and in my pre-conceived notion of the man.  Reading this memoir has been a revelation for me.  I never expected the author to be so candid and upfront about not only his life in general but also about the hopes, fears, the insecurities, the anxieties and the heartbreak which he has gone through, something we also experience from time to time.  I must say I was pleasantly surprised by the kind of candor and honesty that shines through the book.  Indian celebrities, in general, are not given to baring their real self to the public.  Most of them are cagey and have big egos, especially in the entertainment industry.  So, in that sense, it’s a wonderful departure from the norm that someone like Karan has given us an entry into the most intimate spaces of his life.  He has been as candid and truthful as he possibly could have been considering the media environment in this country.  I know a lot of people would be wondering how he has dealt with the constant conjectures about his sexuality.  Even here, without giving too much away, I would just like to say that he has confronted this head on and comes off with a lot of dignity and pride.  In any case, when someone who is as successful and recognizable as he is, tells you where, when and under what circumstances he lost his virginity, you really know you have forged a bond with that person.

   While reading this book, I could hear the chatty, conversational voice of the author and yet at the same time, you can’t help but notice the inherent honesty and the sense of humor with which he has allowed you into his world.  Once you cross 40, you have lived half of your life and the other half can be contemplation on old age, loneliness, and death.  And in that sense, I could feel where he’s coming from.  One other important takeaway for me is how we as people particularly here in India are quick to judge people with whom we have not spent even one hour of our life, but act as if we have the right to brand and judge anyone we feel like.  I know next time I will look at KJ, I will not let my perception of him from the past color my view of him in the present or in the future.