"I'll never write a love story again": Karan Johar/ Times Life Oct 5

Intro: The ultimate weaver of the romantic Indian fantasy has removed his rose tinted glasses. Love, relationships and marriage will never be the same again. Karan Johar journeys from romantic to cynic with Gayatri

When spinner-of-magical fantasies Karan Johar tells you he’s stopped believing in love, you don’t run to press. You hold on to his words, and wait, and hope it was a passing phase, that he spoke too soon, that he will change his mind. No such luck.
The man who helped spin Dilwale Dulhaniya and wrote the mush gush into Kuch Kuch Hota Hai ‘ declares “My idea of love is more cynical today, so I can’t find bring myself to write a love story because I find every line, every scene I’m writing to be artificial. I’m not feeling it. I’m trying to be a romance writer, which is why I’ve stepped away from the writing of My Name Is Khan. Because at its core it’s a love story, and Shibani Bhathija has written the screenplay. I believe in it. It’s a lovely love story. But it’s not come from me, it’s come from her. Because I knew that everytime I sat down to write something, I was just not feeling it. Suddenly, I feel the love in my writing is just dead.”
This and the willful withdrawal from public scrutiny have been some time coming, Karan admits. “If you see the graph there is a shift from idealism to cynicism,” he says. “I reached a zone after Kabhi Al Vida Na Kehna where I just needed to be. I want to make life more about me than it's been before. Today I am in a completely different zone. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai was my understanding of first love, it’s what you hear in college of what you hear others are going through, heartbreak – I never went through any of those feelings. It was not a personal piece of work, it was very borrowed, but that is what my cinema is – it’s always a reflection of what I see around me. In Kabhi Khushi there is parental love which is still something I know about, and that for me was an honest film, (which people call manipulated, actually is my most honest piece of work). Kal Ho Na Ho was really the fear of losing a loved one, and ironically, I lost my father right after, so that kind of mirrored itself in my own life.”
And that’s when what he saw around him began to change his perspective of love. “Death has a way of bringing you back to life. It made me look at life very carefully and observe things. I traveled a lot in that zone for one year. And everywhere I went I met wives who had nothing nice to say about their husbands, husbands who were certainly not interested in their wives, relationships that were crumbling in front of my eyes. I think something is really wrong.”
Karan blames his cynicism on having seen too much and heard too much. “I sound extreme when I say in my perception of the institution of marriage. I do wonder if we turn a blind eye or are genuinely delusional, because somethings are very clear to me. There’s this lack of tolerance in relationships today, which generations before didn’t have. Large levels of communication can do that. Thirty years ago, when there were no computers and no mobiles, there was a certain mystery in people's day-to-day activity. Now there is too much communication, too much technology, everyone is in each other's faces all the time, literally. It’s taken away the beauty of romance and made everyone far more impulsive about what they're feeling and saying.”
Withdrawing is therefore a willful seclusion from emotional onslaughts for Karan. “I’m not in a relationship and therefore people download their problems on me because I have a tendency of playing therapist at times. I tend to be a good listener but now I want to stop listening and start saying. The problem is I’ve made a lot of friends listening and so it’s a lot of what I hear around me that kind of reflects in my work.”
Karan pauses, and hastily adds… “I’m not losing faith in the concept of love. I still believe in the emotion, everybody needs it, wants it, yearns for it, and hopes to get it, but I currently don’t know how to express it on paper. I’m not moved by love on screen anymore. It’s an odd shift, I can’t explain it. I would cry more for the emotion of loss or triumph than for a love story. Even the romantic comedy film that I would rush to see, I watch now and think this is over the top. In fact, the mush that I’ve been known for, love and all that, has died in my thought process. I would love to revisit the love story format post this phase to check if it is still alive and kicking. I saw Jab We Met with a tremendous amount of envy because I was like this is what I wanted to write -- just a simple slice of life love story and I couldn’t do it. I’ve stepped away because it will just disillusion me.”
And how much of what he sees will reflect in his personal life, let alone his films? “How romantic am I? I’m not. I’m 36 today and I’ve lost the zone in which I could have been romantic. Now there’s no point. I never believed in love at first sight, it is really just another word for infatuation, we confuse the two. My personal belief is that love in the 20s and love in the 30s are two different things. There is a lot of settling for in 30s and there’s a lot of searching for in the 20s. I’ve felt tremendous love, I’ve been in love and I know that that’s a different headspace. I know I won’t be in that headspace because I’m far too evolved. That’s the problem. Overthought, overanalysis can kill the most honest and earnest motions and love is one of them.”
You clutch at straws here. Anything to bring Karan back from the brink of hoplessness in love. Why, he wants to know. Because, if he goes down, he will, you tell him, take with him those celluloid dreams of happy endings from the kind of movie-goer who cries at the movies. You believe in destiny, right? What does your horoscope say? He breaks into a smile. “Sunita Menon says I will be in a relationship by the time I’m 38. So I guess, never say never hunh?”. We’re just saying “Phew!”