Karan Johar, a director journey!

All that reminiscing last week about my father got me nostalgic about another kind of journey; the journey of becoming a director.

Most filmmakers will say that watching a certain film cemented their desire to make films. For some, it may be a natural, nepotistic calling. For me, it came about it in a rather comical way.

I was all of 16. I had joined St Xaviers College because I was convinced that advertising was my calling. I remember my first day of junior college vividly. I was wearing jeans and a bright red shirt, tucked in mind you, even though my waistline shouldn’t have allowed for it. I was so thrilled at the prospect of not having to wear a uniform anymore that I went all out. Of course, I was ragged severely for it, but despite that, I went on to settle in quite nicely, even managing to make a few friends along the way. Everything was going as planned, as close to an Archie comic as possible, until the day I went home to be confronted by my weeping mother. She was upset that I had chosen to study arts. According to her, “Boys don’t study arts,” because what kind of a sustainable future would I be able to have with a degree in fine arts? Already traumatised by my father’s choice of profession (and no matter what era we talk about, producing films will always be an uncertain business, a gamble to say the least), and having to bear the realities of the ups and downs that came with it, she understandably didn’t want to see her son embarking on an equally ambivalent track. It should be mentioned here that the Sindhi in her had to somehow find a way to turn one of the men in her life into a businessman. That weepy afternoon went on to change my life in ways I could never have imagined.

And so I joined HR College, still dressed as brightly as possible, and very studiously began my education in commerce. This time I didn’t get ragged for my clothes, but for a supremely embarrassing acting gig on the TV serial Indradhanush, which was airing at the time. I was playing a stupid fat boy named Dodo, and no one let me live that down. Well, except for Jugal Hansraj, one of my oldest and dearest friends. Jugal had just done an equally embarrassing TV commercial for which he was getting teased to no end, so we stuck together, quite like the geeks in glee club do. It was during those days that Anil Thadani, future exhibitor, distributor, and entrepreneur, reintroduced me to a one Aditya Chopra. I had known Adi as a child, meeting him periodically at Abhishek Bachchan’s birthday parties. At the time, the South Bombay brat in me thought Adi, Uday, Abhishek, Hrithik, and Farhan were these uncool boys who would recite dialogues from films like Kranti, Deewar, and Trishul. Adi on his end thought I was snooty, but somewhere between snobbery and curiosity, we found a common ground in college and went on to become best friends.

College, and commerce came to an end, and I had decided that my future lay in France. I had completed a course at Alliance Francaise and was determined to spend a year of my life studying and travelling around France. We had paid all the necessary fees and living expenses and I was all set and ready to go. As is usually the case however, destiny it seemed had other plans. Adi called me one night, a night close to my departure. We had discussed earlier on the possibility of him making his first film, and had gone back and forth on the story a little. That night he asked me to assist him. But I was all set to go to France. Why, I asked him, did he think I would want to work on his film instead? He said, “You’re melodramatic and over the top, and you’ve always got a song and dance bursting out of your head. If you’re not a Hindi filmmaker, I don’t know who is.” I’ll never forget those words.

And so I had a sleepless night. I woke up in the morning, and foretelling as it may have been, asked my father for a year of my life to explore the world of making a film, much like Kajol asking Amrish Puri for a month of her life in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, my first official film. I was of course a mess on the first day, tripping over tracks and smashing into fans and so Adi wisely felt I was better suited for costumes, and gave me carte blanche to style Shah Rukh Khan as I felt best. Day two came along and Shah Rukh seemed to like a patch I had added to a sweater he was to wear. The patch, mind you, was a last minute fix-it to cover up a hole, but therein, I made another friend. Much like Adi, I suppose he had seen something in me, for it didn’t take him long to tell me, “You should make a film. You’ll be good at it. I’ll be in it.” Kajol, sitting behind him, wrapped up in a shawl pulled her nose out of the book she had been devouring and concurred, “It’ll be fun. I’ll do it too!”

Of course, it wasn’t for a couple of years till I wrote Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, but somewhere, my future was mapped out for me, and my journey had begun. Was is because of my emotional mother’s worry for our financial future, or Aditya Chopra’s amusement with my personality, Shah Rukh’s fancy for an interesting patch, or just my father’s filmmaking genes that had finally come to the fore? I may never know what made me a filmmaker, but I’ll always know the people who made me, and that, in a nutshell, is the first act of my story.