Two media-friendly celebs who uncharacteristically gagged themselves during the lockdown were Karan Johar and Mahesh Bhatt. After Kangana Ranaut, anchors like Arnab Goswami and some political voices hauled the two over the coals and held them guilty for the death of Sushant Singh Rajput, Karan got regularly bonked on the head by social media (SM) users and even got called a gangster and a murderer. Mahesh found ancient photos of him kissing daughter Pooja on the lips and cosy ones with starlet Rhea Chakraborty (who acted in a Bhatt flop, Jalebi), splashed in a sleazy way all over the place, making him seem more a predator than a parent or an avuncular filmmaker with a penchant for leaning on young shoulders.
Although Karan claimed that switching off from SM helped him detox, the truth was therapy was sought. He returned to the spotlight one baby step at a time, tentatively hosting a shadow series of Bigg Boss on OTT before Salman Khan returned with the real one. After that stint, Karan returned to form, made a lavish feature film, went full throttle with another season of Koffee With Karan, and is now back to pouting on the podium, as audacious as ever. But scars do exist. They haven’t been shrugged off with nonchalance, as Kangana’s dart of nepotism has stung Karan enough for him to do a show called Showtime on the insider-outsider template. Hopefully, he will spew it all out once and for all and put a full stop to his Prince Harry-style whinging on every available platform. Time to rest that injured tone for being called the ringmaster of nepo-kids and enough of playing the biggest victim of trolling.
“How’s your take on the industry different from Aryan Khan’s Stardom?” That’s the question OTT platforms are asking as there’s a rush to spill insider stories on the film industry. Karan knows every squeak and creak of Aryan’s show, so Showtime will be different.
Unlike him, the famous dial-a-quote Mahesh Bhatt is still missing in action except for occasionally expressing grandfatherly gratitude over a “miracle” called Raha. “I’m saving it all for my memoir, which I’m writing,” he said, turning down requests for interviews. He added, “Using movies as a lens is like a seagull venturing into the ocean but barely scratching the surface...” So there’ll be deeper delves into his life and mind than his films could reveal while he maintains silence.
A lot of famous people are shunning mikes for the same reason. Rakesh Roshan wants to reserve brother Rajesh and all his cinematic and personal moments exclusively for The Roshans, the documentary on his family. “We’re the only film family with such a variety of talents,” he boasts. His parents were musicians. Rajesh followed in their footsteps. Rakesh dabbled in acting, film distribution, production and direction, and there’s son Hrithik as the cream on top. Maybe someday, like Mahesh Bhatt has, RR too will realise that the spoken and written word can convey much more depth and detail than a film can.
Ramesh Sippy has been asked by son Rohan to zip up and not breathe another word on Sholay. A series of celebrations for the film’s 50th year has been planned, leading up to a grand finale in August 2025. Everything that Sippy and the many actors and craftsmen of Sholay have to reveal about the cult film will be documented for the golden anniversary. Any conversation with Sippy would be incomplete without a question on Sholay and since there’s an omerta on it for now, the affable filmmaker is simply avoiding formal interviews.
Thus, the latest pastime of the rich and the famous is to immortalise their stories on celluloid and print through books, documentaries and ostensibly fictional web shows.
Bharathi S. Pradhan is a senior journalist and author
