There is no doubt that Karan Johar’s films are fanciful, unrealistic and escapist. They are also about the good looking and the privileged and serve up an idea of India that caters to his legions of NRI followers. What is particularly difficult to swallow is the way schools and colleges; educational institutions are portrayed in Karan Johar’s films. I mean which India school or college is like this:
They have beautiful, spotless campuses, top notch gym/sporting facilities and stadia and the girls play basketball with the guys. Where? What?
What does that even mean? Friendship in a Karan Johar movie is way cheesy, almost gag-worthy and so not like my school and college days when the term of address for a friend would be ‘arre, uncle or ‘abe o kameeni’.
Not only are the ‘students’ in Karan Johar’s films drop dead gorgeous, they have the toned abs and the impossible bodies that just make us shake our heads in incredulity.
No one I ever knew in school or college looked remotely like this or ever dressed like this. Not even for the fanciest parties. Not even those we referred to disparagingly as the ‘nailpolish gang’.
While the rest of us wrote out exams in hot little rooms seated on uncomfortable benches under the invigilator's gimlet eye, K Jo’s students compete for trophies. They sing, dance, race and play games to get marks and the mythical trophy.
Maybe; I did not know too many of them. Maybe the rich kids were driven to school or came to college on better bikes, but I cannot remember a single solitary rich kid in school like this one.
In K Jo’s mythical world, the poor-orphan-student-on-a-scholarship has had enough gym time to develop those washboard abs. Said poor student also typically gets to sit around on a lounger with a beer bottle and a sophisticated gadget or two?
Sure we had picnics and school trips, but they were humble in the extreme. Fancy locales, balloons, rides, great living arrangements, kind, funny teachers… I don’t remember any of that.
She lives in the UK, dresses as though she lived in an Indian soap and answers to the name Poo. Who answers to a nickname like that; much less asks to be called by a synonym for excreta or a bad smell!
It isn’t just the people and the locations; pretty much everything else is unrealistic in the schools and colleges of Karan Johar’s universe. As for the drama, let’s just say it’s Bollywood and leave it at that.
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