We are all hearing of the, We The Women Conclave and how the men in Bollywood have showed up a positive attitude towards the problems women face in life and in the industry! Amongst the people who were present at this conclave, one was Karan Johar and he revealed in a conversation that he had visited a speech therapist to change his voice!
In conversation with a leading figure in the Media Industry, Karan Johar said, “I was told these things in my school, by my teachers. They are all stuck in boxes. You are meant to be in a certain way. I have been tormented to a point where I went to a speech therapist to change my voice, to bring a baritone. Everybody would say, ‘You sound like a girl.’ I heard that like a million times and I told the therapist, ‘Can you make me sound like a boy?’ It was not fun. I did it for three years. This gentleman gave me voice exercises. It was embarrassing and torturous.”
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Karan Johar reveals he use to imitate Jaya Prada’s step from the song ‘Dafli Wale’, “I went and saw ‘Sargam’ as an 8-year-old and became obsessed with the song ‘Dafli Waale’. I would play the song at home and do Jaya Pradha’s steps and not Rishi Kapoor’s. My father used to ask me to perform and I used to dance like Jaya Pradha was dancing and he somehow never found it strange. No one said I was doing something wrong. But when I went down to the compound of my building or met seniors at the school, all the kids who were not from your domain would make fun of you.”
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“That’s when I started developing an aversion to the word pansy… It scarred me. My hand and feet would move very differently from other boys. I would run funny and I stopped taking part in any sport as a result of it. Because every time I ran, everybody would laugh. Every time I spoke, people laughed as I had a squeaky voice. I thought my parents were absolutely cool. My father was as Punjabi as it can get. But he never thought I was doing something unusual or different but it did make a deep impact on me as I thought I was different and I was told I was different.”, he added.
“Masculinity or feminity is being comfortable in your skin. You would not put things in boxes. Like I would not tell my child don’t cry like a girl. That’s ridiculous. If he wants to cry, he should cry.”, he concluded.
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