Karan Johar, It’s Time You Got Over That First Love Syndrome

From Kuch Kuch Hota Hai to ADHM, there’s no end to the director’s eulogising of first love.

1998: Rahul and Anjali are best friends. Just as Anjali realises she loves Rahul, Rahul falls for someone else, goes on to marry her, and after his wife dies, meets Anjali again to realise that she was his first, hence true love.

2016: Ayan and Alizeh become friends. Ayan falls in love with her but it’s ek tarfah pyaar. So he goes and romances the divorcee Saba, only to be told by her ex-husband how pure one-sided love is. And - you guessed it right - Ayan’s first love is the only love that truly rings the bell of his heart.

Guess what? 18 years have passed between the release of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (KKHH) and Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (ADHM). The stars in his films have changed, the audience has changed, but filmmaker Karan Johar has shown no signs of maturing over the years. First love is still what he eulogises in his films as the one and only romantic relationship to be treasured in life - much in the lines of the happily ever afters of our fairy tales.

Jesus, what is this obsession with first love, Mr Johar?

First Love Is... Traumatic

First loves are definitive moments in our lives - there’s no doubt about it.

It’s this strange feeling of overpowering affection towards another individual which almost literally hits you in the gut. Before you know it, you are spiralling down Alice’s rabbit hole - only this time it’s in your own heart - trying to make sense of all those conflicting emotions.

It’s wonderful, yes. Till it becomes disastrous. Which, believe it or not, Mr Johar, it does for at least 90 per cent of the human population. It’s perhaps one of those events in your life which leaves a lasting impression - not for the love, but for the unfamiliar pain it usually brings along. It’s nothing short of traumatic.

And that’s not because of judaai or some such shit, but because you are almost always with the wrong person. In one’s teenage years or even in the early ’20s, we barely know ourselves - our own strengths and weaknesses - forget about someone else’s!

The first attraction is simply chemical and as with the first time with everything, the newness of it all compounds our feelings. It’s barely love - in any sense of the term.

And when we grow older and look back on this first love, most of us thank the Lord God it did not work out. I, for one, would have ended in jail or a psychiatric hospital for sure if that one had lasted!

First Means First

The one theme that Johar’s films keep harping on is that first love is the only love that lasts. And I can’t even begin on how wrong it is at so many levels.

The reason it’s called “first” is because - you’d never guess it, Mr Johar - it indicates that it’s first in a line of several such relationships for most people.

You change and mature over the years and only gradually get to know yourself well. You get a hang of what you want in life. And without being flippant at all, you need experience to know what you can bring to a relationship and what you expect from it.

To make things even simpler, life is like this conveyor belt and you get certain things at certain points of your life. If you stand there waiting all your life for that first nice red suitcase you saw but did not pick up, well, you are a fool. And that’s exactly what Johar, the director, should now stop doing in his films - make us feel like fools.

Treating Partners Like Shit

I have also always wondered how demeaning it would have actually been to Tina - played by Rani Mukerji in KKHH - to know that her husband loved her but not enough. He was always hankering after his “pehla pyaar” Anjali. What if she hadn’t died so conveniently? I mean, bloody hell, why would I want to live with someone like that?

Cut to ADHM. If you take out all the gloss, what does Ranbir and Aishwarya’s relationship actually mean to him? Yes, she is the one who begins and ends it, but is Ranbir’s Ayan happy to play along and just be an impassive receptor of her affections till it suits him to leave - all because of that first love? If you think about it, it’s a phenomenally hurtful and insensitive treatment of anyone you get romantically involved with - “Oh I’m feeling loved and having fun with you. But guess what? My first love is the only one who matters. Bye!” WTF!

Get A Grip, Move On

And if all this is not enough, getting stuck up on first love - like Johar does on screen - is injurious to one’s own mental well-being. It’s called obsession. I mean, just get a grip, move on. Wasting time - real or reel - on something that didn’t work out amounts to nothing but ill-treatment of yourself.

And idiocy.

And phenomenal boredom.

Life has surely got much more to offer than a measly first love, eh Mr Johar?