Karan, alvida na kehna

Hey Karan,

Look what I found!

It’s a picture of you that I took when you were here in Singapore for the IIFA awards 2004.

Look at you. Good-looking, suave, sophisticated, humorous, not fat, not bald, rich, famous, successful.

Is it really any wonder then that when your name comes up, most guys throw their hands up in the air and scream "Gay!!!!" as if it’s a bad thing?

I guess guys are more freaked out at the thought of two gay guys together than girls are about two gay girls. Or is it that gay people make guys uncomfortable? Insecure? That they may become ‘one of those’ if they hang out in gay company?

All this talk about you and Shah Rukh annoys me. Maybe you guys are a couple, maybe you aren’t, who cares? What’s that got to do with anything, really? And in any case, whatever happened to strong friendships within the same gender? Do they not exist anymore? Now you can’t be nice to your friends who are of the same gender as you without being labelled ‘gay’?

But I don't care what they say about you. I like you. I really like you, Karan. To me, you’re the perfect celebrity. And like I always say, celebrities are not married or old or gay. They’re just celebrities and they belong to everyone.

In other words:

Tu haan kar, ya naa kar, tu hai meraaaaaaaaaa Karan! :D

You know, Karan, you’re like Shaan to me. I like Shaan so much that even though I know he must have sung at least some crappy songs, when I try to think, nothing comes to mind. It’s almost like blogging. If you like a blogger, anything they write is awesome. If you don’t like them, even a great post by them will make you go "Oh puh-leez!"

So maybe that’s what it is then. I like your movies because I like you.

In spite of the fact that I don’t like all your movies or all parts of each movie. They say “Ah, a typical Karan Johar movie!” like it’s a bad thing. Maybe that’s how they define it. But to me, a Karan Johar movie is a movie that has moments that pierce right through your heart. Even if some of your movies don’t quite make sense as a whole, there are scenes that will always stay in my heart. I enjoy your movies by dissecting them into scenes.

Your critics say that you pull at the pursestrings under the guise of pulling heartstrings. I say – what’s wrong with that? If a guy can reassure me that in this cynical world, I still have some sentiments left in my heart, I will be so grateful I won’t even mind him making money out of my tears.

I admire your ability to make me cry. I admire Bollywood for its ability to make me cry.

Because I believe that it is easy to make people laugh, but it is not easy to make people cry.

When the train pulled away with a teary-eyed Anjali waving to an equally teary-eyed Rahul with Tina looking on helplessly, when Aman told Anjali to go ahead and marry the one she loved, when Rohit introduced himself as Yash to Rahul, when Krish sang the Indian national anthem in London and made his mother cry, when DJ saw right through Rohit’s useless attempts at tying his shoelaces, when Naina cried in the rain for lost love, when Jenny told Lajo who Jiya really was, I have turned on the Ganga-Jamuna waterworks at all your movies.

All except KANK.

Now here’s the thing – there are many reasons why we like a particular hindi movie. It could be that the story is our own and we identify with a character. Or we experience such a strong emotion for the character – whether it be love, hatred, anger or others – that we wanna see what happens to him/her. We are rooting for them to get what he/she deserves.

Here’s why I did not like KANK. I couldn’t care less about any of the characters in the movie. I did not identify with any of the characters, nor did I sympathise with them. Before the movie started, my friend and I were assessing our tissue situation in order to be prepared, but disappointingly, not once did a single tear roll down my cheek, even though Rani was crying buckets. I just sat there, emotionless, waiting for your movie to end.

Why not?

Simply put - I did not 'feel' anything for any of the characters.

I did not care why SRK was tearing as he declared his marriage to be a failure. I did not care why Abhishek was breaking vases and plates and asking Rani why she didn't wanna sleep with him. I just didn't care.

And I was surprised that you made a movie in which I did not care about anyone.

In K3G, I loved Hrithik's character. I rooted for him to unite the family. And in spite of disliking almost every character in that movie (Kajol and Kareena especially, who I thought were bordering on annoying at times and Jaya Bachchan who I thought belittled herself, literally and otherwise, by standing on a stool and allowing Amitabh Bachchan to make a statement like “Ab aap lag rahi hain Yashwardhan Raichand ki dharampatni.”), I liked the movie for Hrithik. And the fact that it showed me that I was still capable of crying for a completely fictional character. My heart was still functional.

In KKHH, I cried more than in K3G. Because unlike K3G where I'd disliked some characters, here I liked everyone. I wanted everyone to be alive, loved and happy. Even the otherwise silly Sallu! My heart went out to him when Kajol went to SRK.

KHNH was different. Yes, SRK hammed like he hams in every other movie, and this movie was nowhere close to Anand, but it was a movie that spoke to me. Perhaps I needed it at that point in my life. The underlying message of ‘Jiyo, khush raho, muskurao, kya pata kal ho na no’ (“Live, be happy, smile, for all you know there may be no tomorrow”) is something that pierced deep into my heart and has stayed there since.

KANK had its funny moments and emotional moments. But as I do with all your movies, I selectively filtered out the humour and entertained myself, but I took nothing back from the movie. I did not think about it for days after watching it, the way I do with many hindi movies.

And in the end, I asked myself - so what was it that I did not like?

Perhaps what I didn’t like was the way you stuck to the conventional definition of an extra-marital affair. Did you really need to culminate the ‘extra-marital affair’ with the love-making between Shah Rukh and Rani? And the way in which that whole scene was picturised - I wondered where the love was. SRK and Rani were supposed to be in love, weren't they? On a more general level, what really is an extra-marital affair? Is it wholly defined by you sleeping with someone else outside your marriage? So if you’re totally in love with someone else but you only have sex with your spouse, you’re not cheating on him/her? Is that not an extra-marital affair?

Of course, I applaud you for taking up a subject that's still kinda taboo in India. And they say Karan Johar sticks to ‘formula’. The last movie in which anyone picked this subject was perhaps 'Murder', but they chose a heroine who's not exactly portrayed in a positive light, and conveniently finished off the guy who caused the infidelity. I applaud you for not showing convenient solutions such as the ‘strayers’ realising that what they were doing was ‘wrong’ and going back to their marriages. I applaud you for not conveniently killing off someone at the end. I applaud you for not making the ‘strayers’ suffer and die lonely and painful deaths because ‘they had sinned’. And yet, you managed to add in a convenient end. I couldn't buy the fact that SRK and Rani were happy ever after because they did not seem to 'belong together' in the first place, something that you always take care of in your other movies - the chemistry between the lead pair.

So in spite of the bad reviews almost everywhere, KANK made a huge profit. Critics who had dismissed the movie shook their heads at the ‘stupid audience that eats out of your hand’. Speaking of bad reviews, I actually saw one that hinted at your being gay (what’s that got to do with your movies anyway??) and said something to the effect of "Karan Johar will probably never get married and so he's not qualified to make a movie on extra-marital affairs." HUH? So someone who wants to make a movie about a suicide bomber has to blow himself up and then come back in his next life to make the movie?

In the same vein, someone said "Karan Johan always sticks to movies about North Indian affluent families. For once, we'd like to see a movie on a South Indian, a Bengali, etc." HUH again! He makes movies about North Indian affluent families because... DUH! Sheesh. Make up your mind people, do you want him to make movies with settings he's familiar with, or not?

So maybe you're the kind who appeals to the masses. Who are the critics anyway? People who just disagree with the masses? Most of the time, if the movie is a hit, critics don't like it. If the movie makes a loss, critics say they loved it. Agreed that there are some movies you should make that you can look back proudly at, but what will a commercial movie-maker do with bouquets from the so-called critics? And just how long should he keep doing it - till he's bankrupt?

I'm not saying that there are no movies that are liked by both the masses and the critics, but how many of those do we actually have in a year? Think about it. So why is it considered so wrong if you make commercial movies for the masses?

They say Karan Johar sticks to the same storyline. But when he experiments, they diss him. It's not easy to please everyone anyway. So Karan, you do whatever you want! Experiment all you can – you surely have the money for it! You're one of the young directors who's maintained the link between the old style of Bollywood movie-making and the new trends. Aditya Chopra was another, but of course after the fabulous DDLJ, he went on to produce Fanaa. Enough said.

I guess I really like you. When you like someone so much, you don’t mind it too much if they disappoint you once in a while.

And that’s why even if I don’t like some of your movies, I will root for you all the way.

I'll love you unconditionally.

On one condition. :D

Just please don’t ever come up with a movie like Banaras. :|

Love always,
Sayesha