Karan Johar recalls getting ragged and facing isolation in childhood, says 'I was not boy enough or man enough'

Karan Johar opens up about his childhood and wanting to feel included, "The first thing I wanted to do was just be. I wanted to belong. That's the first thing I want to do. I just felt very different from all the other boys my age, all the other kids my age. I think I was just in those days back in the 80s, I didn't know how to describe my headspace because I didn't understand what I was. I felt I was different. I felt I was different from the others, and I wasn't able to kind of articulate it to myself, and those were not days that you know we could get any kind of counselling, any kind of you know visit to somebody who could guide you, help you nurture you in that way. Even your parents were giving you all the love, like I was the only child, so I got a lot of love, but I knew I was very different. I was told I was, you know, more feminine than I should be. I walked differently. I ran differently. I spoke differently. My choices in life, my hobbies in life, were different."

Karan got candid about his inclination towards Hindi Cinema and music, "I liked to watch a lot of Hindi movies. A lot of kids in my neighbourhood. We grew up in an elite neighbourhood called Malabar Hill. And like nobody really watched Hindi cinema at that time, Indian cinema. I was watching all those movies and dancing to those songs in my room. And boys and girls my age were like listening to their parents' favourites, like Abba, or they were getting to like Wham, George Michael Madonna. It was a breakthrough of like you know, western pop artists, and you know I was not really getting into I was listening to Lata Mangeshkar and Kishor Kumar and Asha Bhosle and Mohammed Rafi, and everything about me was different.

Karan revealed how he wanted to belong but was left in isolation, "So whenever I went down, you know we lived in like apartment blocks, and when you went down, it was the thing that all the kids in the apartment block would come down and play in the evenings, and I wanted to belong. I wanted to be part of the football team. I wanted to play cricket with the boys. But nobody chose me because I wasn't good enough. You know, I wasn't sporty enough. I was not boy enough or man enough. So when you ask me what I wanted to be, the first thing at that age was that I wanted to belong."

Karan spoke about being ragged in school

He further shared, "The very first part of my formative years, my teenage years, was just to belong. And no one told me then that you don't have to. You can be your own person. That guidance, that nurturing, that philosophy of life wasn't given to me at that point in time. And I remember the particular moment when my mother sat me down, and I was 12, because I was going through a really rough time. I wanted to change schools. I wanted to because I felt I was being ragged in and around. And I still went back to the same school. I didn't change schools."

Karan concluded by sharing his mother's advice, "And she told me, she says, 'Look, I want you to be an achiever no matter what you do. I want you to be good at something. Just hold on to what you think you're good at because I feel like you're not nurturing, you know, what you're good at.' And I was good at like elocution and debate and drama and that's the first time I took my mom's advice and I walked into the interact club and I got very first year you know I started representing my school at debates and executions and there the confidence started building so it was something that happened organically you know I think my chat with my mother was very defining and I don't think she realizes how defining that chat was to me it made such a big impact."

 

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