The Casual Non-Conformist

While Karan Johar might be sitting at the heart of Bollywood, embodying every quality that defines the industry – good, bad and ugly – the man has effectively changed the landscape of Hindi cinema, without taking himself too seriously - and he doesn’t really care what you think of him.

- Arnesh Ghose

Let’s get the accusations out of the way first, I thought, as I planned this interview, gearing up to ask “difficult questions” of Johar. We were shooting him at BFF Gauri Khan’s store and I walked in, ready for some confrontation.

I walked into the store to see Karan pouting for the camera, his eyes staring through the oversized sunglasses that he is in love with these days. I looked at the clothes lying around and giggled to myself. When Karan isn’t smiling, his resting bitch face is gaunt and unfriendly. He didn’t smile for the camera, expertly holding stances and flaunting his sharp, post-weight loss jaw line. He was being the diva, the showstopper.

When I was prepping for all the accusations I would fling at him, I was stumped. So, Karan Johar is the poster boy for Bollywood cinema? He is peddling regressive content and soppy melodrama? The last Dharma film you can remotely call melodramatic is We Are Family. The film released in 2010. In the last two years, Dharma has produced films like Kapoor and Sons, Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, Dear Zindagi, Ittefaq, Lust Stories and Raazi. Even their bad films – like OK Jaanu and Baar Baar Dekho – were interesting attempts. So, Johar and Dharma are nowhere close to the kind of commercial and massy potboilers a Rohit Shetty or Salman Khan make.