Karan Johar

Let me admit here that I really should not be keeping a secret diary. For I don’t have any secrets. I have a hotline with celebrity tabloid Bombay Times which publishes all my secret thoughts. That was why I am on Page 1 of this paper five or six times a week. But sometimes this can lead to problems. As my talk show Koffee with Karan started, Bombay Times carried  a Page 1 story that Salman Khan was making a conscious effort to drink green tea. And where did that  leave my show? You know Salman, he was my guest in the inaugural episode but I could not protest on why he chose to switch over to green tea at this time. But I kept quiet. Sallu has a temper and I did not want to be a black buck!

The Koffee show is now in its fourth year yet I am assailed with doubts. Can I persuade the one and only Rekha to appear on it ? I am not afraid of any comparison with the Simi Garewal show. Viewers were unanimous that I am more beautiful than any Simi, with or without nakhras. I may be able to persuade Rekha but not Her Man even if I offered him the lead role in ‘Kabhi Kabhi Gum, Kabhi Kabhi Bum’, a sequel to you-know-what. Sometimes the movies of great directors are not understood by people and need explanation. I have had to do this with some of my great movies. Film critics from NYT, Guardian and New Yorker are still puzzled at the last scene of my maiden film Kuch Kuch Hota Hai where suddenly there is a switchover of bridegrooms which never happens in Indian weddings. Sometimes, not only the film fraternity but even people in other professions need explanations for my classics. Medical professionals from the US and Europe have wanted to know how a terminally ill Shahrukh Khan, brought to the US for a heart transplant, in my Kal Ho Na Ho managed to run all the way to Brooklyn Bridge and enact some highly charged emotional scenes before returning to the hospital and dying after the usual long soliloquy. Guests at the show will understand all this because while watching my movies they keep their brains at home. Give them some romance, some songs and the rest can all be nonsense...kuch kuch ho jata hai!

So why is Koffee with Karan such a hit? The guests on the show love me. I mean, both male and female. Salman never once promised to drive me back home at night or take me to the zoo and show all kinds of deer, including the black bucks. My shows will now become more and more true to life. I am even committing a small crime so that I can get myself arrested and interview Sanjay Dutt inside Yerawada jail. But first I must persuade the jailor to permit us to drink coffee and not that jail tea.

The Mumbai-based satirist is the creator of ‘Trishanku’; E-mail your secret diarist: vgangadhar70 AT gmail.com