Karan Johar

Much has been speculated about Karan Johar’s sexuality. Hints have been dropped several times, from the AIB roast to Twinkle Khanna’s Section 377 remark on his show Koffee With Karan, but the filmmaker has never explicitly come out of the closet.

However, Karan addresses the elephant in the room in his newly released biography, An Unsuitable Boy, and The Times Of India shared some excerpts from the book.

KJo is quoted as saying, “Everybody knows what my sexual orientation is. I don’t need to scream it out. If I need to spell it out, I won’t only because I live in a country where I could possibly be jailed for saying this.” He added, “The reason I don’t say it out aloud is simply that I don’t want to be dealing with the FIRs. I’m very sorry. I have a job, I have a commitment to my company, to my people who work for me; there are over a hundred people that I’m answerable to. I’m not going to sit in the courts because of ridiculous, completely bigoted individuals who have no education, no intelligence.”

The filmmaker also opened up about the homophobia and the daily abuse he faces on social media. He wrote, “I have become like the poster boy of homosexuality in this country. But honestly, I have no problem with people saying what they want about me. Twitter has the most abuse. I wake up to at least 200 hate posts saying, ‘Get out, you’re polluting our nation, you’re dirtying society’ or ‘Shove [IPC Section] 377 up your arse.’ I get this on a daily basis and I’ve learned to laugh it off…One man came up to me once very cockily at Heathrow airport and said, ‘Is it true that you are a homo?’ He was with his wife and child, and he asked me this. I looked at him and said, ‘Why, are you interested?’ And he said, ‘Hey, what-what what!’ And I said, ‘Don’t what-what me.’ And I walked out.”

For the longest time, people had interpreted his relationship with his best friend Shah Rukh Khan as something else. An agitated Karan wrote, “For heaven’s sake, for years there were rumours about Shah Rukh and me. And I was traumatized by it. I was on a show on a Hindi channel, and I was asked about Shah Rukh.’Yeh anokha rishta hai aap ka,’ the interviewer said. He worded it in such a way that I got really angry. I said, ‘If I asked you if you are sleeping with your brother, how will you feel?’ So he said, ‘What do you mean? How can you ask me this question?’ I said, ‘How could you ask me this question? For me, no matter what ups and downs Shah Rukh and I have been through, he is a father figure, an older brother to me. For me to look at him in that way or be subjected to those rumours was just ridiculous.”

He added that SRK is unfazed by these rumours. In fact, he had even poked fun at the gossip mongers on an episode of Koffee With Karan. When the actor was asked what he would do if he woke up one day as Karan Johar, SRK laughed that as per rumours, he’d wake up with Karan and not as him.

Karan also opened up about sex, which he said was “very personal” and “very intimate” for him. He wrote, “I lost my virginity at 26. Yes, it is true. Why would I say this on record if it were not? It’s not something I am proud of. It was in New York. Up till that point, I was sexually completely inexperienced. Even when I was a kid, I was very backward in this department.” Explaining the reason, he wrote, “While growing up, I was combating a hundred issues in my head. The thought of sex made me awkward; it almost rattled me. I thought, am I asexual? Why am I not feeling this? Why am I not doing anything? There was a lot of turbulence in my head. For me to address it, talk about it, discuss it, was a big no-no. I brushed it under the carpet all through the making of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. At that time, I was also very large and was grappling with my weight issues. I felt physically undesirable. Post Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, I had actually started working a little on my looks. I had lost some weight and had groomed myself a bit. Finally, I had developed a little spring in my step, a little confidence. That’s when my first encounter happened, after the release of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, out of the country.”

KJo’s candid confessions present a different side to the jovial and flamboyant person we have seen so far. It takes a lot of courage to open up about one’s sexuality, which is still regarded as taboo in our society. Karan, more power to you for being an inspiration for many more to speak up.

Source:IndiaToday