When Karan Johar said he couldn’t bear Aditya Chopra because he talked in Hindi: ‘I found it downmarket and uncool’

Karan Johar is close friends with Aditya Chopra and even started his career in the Hindi film industry as an assistant director on Aditya’s debut directorial Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge. However, the filmmaker did not like to hang out with Aditya when they were children as he did not like how he always spoke in Hindi. Also Read| When Karan Johar’s father did not want him to assist Aditya Chopra on DDLJ

Karan and Aditya Chopra, sons of late producer Yash Johar and late director Yash Chopra respectively, are also related as Karan’s mom Hiroo Johar is sister to Yash Chopra. Karan revealed in his memoir An Unsuitable Boy (2017) that he would complain to Hiroo about Aditya and his Hindi and request her not to send him to his house.

An excerpt from the book reads, “Yes, as a child, I was in the company of star kids. I knew Hrithik (Roshan), Abhishek (Bachchan), Shweta (Bachchan), Zoya (Akhtar), and Farhan (Akhtar). I was always closer to the girls, Shweta and Zoya. The boys were very bratty, especially Abhishek (he is four years younger than me) and Farhan. I never really got along with them. I never liked them. And Adi (Aditya Chopra) and gang always spoke a lot in Hindi. That was something I couldn’t bear.”

Karan further wrote, “I used to come back to my mother and tell her, ‘Mummy, they speak only in Hindi! Don’t send me to their house.’ She would say, ‘what do you mean they speak only in Hindi?’ I said they were very filmi in their talk; that they would say things like ‘Tune Kranti dekhi hai kya? Kitni acchi film hai (Have you seen Kranti? It’s such a good film).’ I found this constant talk in Hindi rather downmarket and uncool. I told my mother that I would not talk to these kids.”

Apart from assisting Aditya Chopra on DDLJ, Karan had also made a cameo appearance in the 1995 film as a friend of Shah Rukh Khan’s character Raj. It was Aditya and Shah Rukh who had convinced Karan to do the cameo after the actor who was originally supposed to do it fell sick. Karan later made his own directorial debut with the 1998 film Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.