Book Review: An Unsuitable Boy

I picked up this book because I wanted to read something light, and positive. The resonating image of Karan Johar is of a chirpy, happy, rich, over the top Bollywood celebrity and I thought how terse would his auto biography be! It is a light read though not a short one. At the same time it not all cheerful and happy. He is candid in his writing. I am not sure I should call it writing. Reading it was like listening to him rambling about his life. There is an attempt to arrange this rambling into a set of themes but it still reads like rambling. In the beginning, there is a chronological pattern but that went for a toss in adulthood where there is a lot of back and forth and repetitions across themes.
Although titled ‘An Unsuitable Boy’, much of the book is about how he is a very ‘suitable’ child, boss, friend, etc. I kept waiting for the unsuitability to emerge but it didn’t. He is right in acknowledging that his life is perceived to be a lot more adventurous than it actually is. One thing that has emerged clearly, and something that is quite endearing, is his anchoring in the relationships that he has developed over a period of years. His friends are important to him. Although the section that was mentioning his friends read like a list to me. It may be my own indifference towards the film industry or the lives of celebrities in Bollywood, I had not clue who many of these people are and why is this list being made. I am unaware of many of the controversies that he has spoken about, and had to undertake online searches to know what the fuss was about. He appears to be an emotion driven person, and gets moved by how people perceive him. He mentions that this has changed over the past few years but it seems to have been recent.
Although he mentions that he has been appreciated for his treatment of homosexuality in cinema, and justifies it with the need to bring in humour to make it possible for it to be a topic of conversation in every household, I was personally not convinced. Elsewhere in the book, he acknowledges his elite upbringing and background. Using it as an excuse to not be able to relate to anyone in other circumstances sounds quite flimsy. But he gets brownie points for honesty.
In the end, I find him honest, particularly about relationships which is a plus point. However, for much of the reading, there was nothing very gripping in the book. This may be because of my own lack of interest, or the very un-Bollywood like his life seems to have been. The only reason his story is a book is because he is a celebrity. There was not enough to write about excepting the big names that he is friends with. If you are a Bollywood buff, you might actually enjoy it more than I did.