Kajol’s cousin Ayaan Mukherjee has been quietly shooting Wake Up Sid with Ranbir Kapoor and Konkona Sen Sharma. “Ayaan is barely in his twenties and he has his own youthful sensibilities,” comments his producer, Karan Johar. “So I’ve largely left it to Ayaan to make the film the way he wants to. He wanted a particular sound, so I let him record his music his way. I only step in when the director wants me to help out with something. Like when Rensil D’silva (who’s making Jehad for the same production house, Dharma Productions) told me he can’t understand film music, I did the music of his film. Otherwise, I try not to cramp the director’s style.”

One thing’s for sure. Karan has his pet themes and they’re there in the films, whether he directs them or not. For instance, in Wake Up Sid, Konkona is Ranbir’s older love inter est in the film. The older-woman- younger-boy angle was something Karan himself had wanted to explore in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna where the script had been written for Kajol and Abhishek Bachchan as a couple. With the wife being chronologically older than the young husband, the incompatibility would’ve been her irritation over his immaturity. Of course, when Kajol refused to do KANK (her daughter, Nysa was too young for Kajol to go off to New York for a long spell of shooting) and a younger Rani Mukherjee took her place, the whole script went for a toss. KANK was no longer about an older wife and a younger husband once Rani and Abhishek played the couple. So Karan has now got the theme-that-remained-unfulfilled-during-KANK in Ayaan’s Wake Up Sid.

There’s another equation that Karan had wanted while scripting Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham. Originally, the maid’s girl from Chandni Chowk was to have been a Muslim. In other words, Kajol was to have been the Muslim girl Shah Rukh Khan marries against his father, Amitabh Bachchan’s wishes. But by bringing the Hindu-Muslim angle into the story, Karan found his script getting unwieldy and complicated. He was also unsure then of how to keep the balance in a sensitive issue like the clash of two religions. Thus, K3G finally had Kajol playing the loud, lower-middle class girl who fascinates the upper crust Shah Rukh Khan. It was watered down into a class clash and not an issue between two religions.

But long after making K3G, the equation he had discarded must’ve continued to linger in Karan Johar’s mind for he has got it off his chest by writing a Hindu-Muslim angle into his new film My Name Is Khan. Yes, Shah Rukh is Mr Khan, Kajol is his Hindu wife in the film and when their life is disrupted after 9/11, there is a conflict between the husband and wife.

Working on a story set in America after 9/11 (for My Name Is Khan) seems to have influenced Karan quite a bit (he researched deeply on the subject) because the same thought runs in his other production, Jehad, too (also set in the US, post terror). However, if inside sources are to be believed, it was not Karan but a su perb film called Arlington Road that in spired Jehad. For that matter, Arlington Road is said to have in spired both Jehad and Yashraj’s New York! One knows that Karan and Aditya Chopra are close friends. But so close that they’re individu ally even making the same subject?

“Rensil’s film is hardly Arlington Road anymore,” retorts Karan Johar. According to him, by the time the Hindi film was scripted, it was a new film altogether.

One doesn’t know about Rensil’s directorial capabilities (he did do a fine job of scripting Rang De Basanti for Rakeysh Mehra) but Karan Johar sure can turn any script into a unique film of its own. That’s why Karan is not one of those who hold the script close to their chests — he is com pletely confident that he alone can turn it into a grand film. His assistant Tarun Mansukhani (who directed Dostana for the banner) recalls that during K3G, several copies of the script were made. A master at style and scale and superb at bringing a tear to your eye, Karan wasn’t in the least bit perturbed over somebody hijacking his script and mak ing it into a film before him because he was so certain that “I alone can make this film”!

With that sort of confidence, it’s no big secret that SRK in My Name Is Khan is a Muslim personally affected by 9/11 and that he is autistic in the film.

There’s no question of trying to plug a leak for Karan is super sure that he alone can make My Name Is Khan into the film you have to watch this December.

Bharathi S. Pradhan is Managing Editor, Movie Mag International