Now 46, filmmaker Karan Johar on his journey from 'loving your parents' to orgasming in front of them
Karan Johar
There's a scene in the 2001 French comedy Amélie when the movie's protagonist asks herself, "How many couples are having an orgasm right now?" The answer she arrives at seems to be 15. Looking out of a Mumbai apartment, shuttered in by its grills with the rains beating down and competing in volume against the traffic, if one asks oneself this question, what answer will one get?
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With an estimated population of 22.5 million in Mumbai, and using the generic adult percentage of India (55), and other surveys of "have you ever orgasmed" — various surveys through India say 70 per cent of women respondents had never orgasmed and in another report 55 per cent of male respondents admitted to faking an orgasm — the real statistic evades us.
But, there's at least one orgasm that we all know has been had. And we've all witnessed it at various times as we logged on to Netflix and reached the climax (well, nearly) scene of Karan Johar's segment of Lust Stories, the second edition of the anthology by the makers of Bombay Talkies, which released last month. The scene has Megha (Kiara Advani), a sexually dissatisfied young wife — if you can't even count to 11, does it count at all? — using a stolen dildo and getting caught out in front of her husband's family.
Speaking over the phone — we are told this is the only time he will be able to spare, as he gets on with his day's commute — Johar says, "I was, in fact, the last to shoot among the four of us. I hadn't found an idea that excited me enough. My segment of Bombay Talkies was a heavy topic, I wanted to take a similar path but say it with humour." Men, his female friends when confiding in him have told him, are clueless in bed, much as Vicky Kaushal's character in the film. And pleasure is deeply entrenched in patriarchy.
"I wanted to portray that pleasure is a two-way street and women have the right to it, too. I wanted to root this story in a traditional, middle-class home," he says. The story, he says, was then drafted by Sumit Saxena, who was co-screenplay writer on Pyaar Ka Punchnama. The ideation on the anthology, says Johar, began over the portrayal of lust and love, ending however at the former. But, lust itself is a tough topic to portray in Indian cinema.
"Lust remains a negative emotion, we are not allowed to feed it," he says. Love is still needed to legitimise carnal desires and that often messes up a sexual dynamic. "Of course, when love and lust collide, that's a bonafide relationship." Sexual desire on Indian celluloid, he agrees, remains skewed towards the freakish. He points to the lip-biting sequences of the 1980s and hip-thrusts of the 90s.
"It's not been portrayed as a normal phenomenon when you stare at a person in the office or someone you see at the coffee shop and look away, the subtlety and nuance isn't there." The closest that he has seen lust being portrayed as it should be has been in erotic films or in the 1990 Spanish film, Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down by Pedro Almodóvar. "The way the man looks at the woman in that film, there's something very sexy about it. Not too many can achieve that." That movie is about a man who has been released from a mental asylum and then, in a bid to make his fantasy come true, kidnaps a porn star he is in love with and envisions as his wife and mother of his children.
For those who see it, it's a been a long journey for Johar from Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham to Ae Dil Hai Mushkil. "I was 24 when I made Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. What did I know about love then?" says the now 46-year-old parent-of-two. In his later films, he has moved from talking about parental love, to one-sided love to infidelity, then unrequited love and then cynicism. It seems to mirror his own journey and emotions. "Today, there are no Laila-Majnus. There are practical questions I will ask [to a lover]. 'Where do you live?', 'what do you do?' In young love, people are ready to die for each other and fight society, but I don't want to die for you."
But, his next film, Dhadak, a remake of Marathi blockbuster Sairat, is just that, we point out. He laughs, "Well, they are young. If we meet the same couple 20 years later, I am not sure if they'd be ready for the same. I am 46. I am far too cynical, far too practical." We come back to lust. When did that journey begin? At the age of 12, he says. We wonder if he was aware of himself that early, or were we too late. The processing of what that emotion was, he says, came later. "There was no emotional connect with that person, there was only a carnal desire and I realised, oh my god, this is was lust is. But, lust is not taught to us, we don't know how to feel it. We can feel love, the idea of getting married and having children. But, where is [the reference point to] lust? It's part of something we need."
Johar became father to a pair of twins last year in March. A single father, to Yash and Roohi, does he miss having a partner? No. "There's no place for anyone else." His family unit where he raises his kids with his mother Hiroo Johar is quite tight and settled. "My third baby is my production house and I have a fourth one at home, my mom, who is over 75. I am quite satiated with life. This works for me."
Happy to be a single parent, he says his life has always been unconventional in either the personal or the professional. "I have never fallen for the trap of log kya kahenge, whether it is when taking on the role of a talk show host, wearing a flamboyant jacket or judging dance reality shows." His choices. Yes, we come back to that. The choice of filming the orgasm as his most iconic "loving your parents" song — the K3G soundtrack sung by Lata Mangeshkar — plays in the background was a master move. It reeked of Johar laughing at himself.
"We thought it was an intellectual juxtaposition of what was happening in one part of the house to the other part of the house. Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham was the perfect family film. And Advani's character was having an orgasm in front of the family. When this idea came [to use the song as a background], I laughed out loud. We knew it would create a storm in the coffee cup," he says. Nope, even in idioms, Johar would rather have coffee.
The whacky moment is said to have brought discomfort to the Mangeshkar family [Lata Mangeshkar sang the iconic number], but Johar says, "They have not said it directly to me. There's no byline to that article, there's not a single confirmed quote on who from the Mangeshkar family is saying this. I have a feeling I know who has written it. It's obviously a creative mind. But, it's only helped Netflix, so great."
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