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Karan Johar’s Kal Ho Naa Ho was the story of a man who was staring death in the face and had travelled to New York for his treatment, but for Karan, this story became personal as it was during the making of this film in New York that his father Yash Johar was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. In his autobiography, An Unsuitable Boy, Karan revisited this chapter of his life as he spoke about how reel was mirroring real life during those difficult months.
Karan shared in his book that when he started shooting for the film, he did an outdoor shoot in Toronto where he met a coffee-cup reader who had warned him “beware of the month of August. Beware of the first two days of August, because you might get some kind of news that might shake up your life.” And it was on the second day of August in 2003 that Karan learnt about his father’s ill health. Recalling that day, Karan shared that they were shooting Saif Ali Khan’s introduction scene in New York when his father pulled him aside to share the devastating news.
“I looked at him and – I have no idea why these words came out of my mouth, I have no explanation – but I looked at him and said, ‘Do you have cancer?” Karan recalled. And as his father said yes, Karan “just sank, literally sank into a chair in the room.”
He recalled sharing this tragic news with the film’s lead actor, Shah Rukh Khan, who was playing a cancer patient in the film. “I told Shah Rukh. He broke down. Then I realised the reality of what was happening, because he wept like a baby. He held his stomach, and he just wept and wept, as if from his core. He cried and said ‘I’ve lost one father, I cant lose another’,” he recalled. Karan and his team were still shooting when this tragedy shook their life. The film was scheduled to release in November and Karan had to shoot the film, as well as be there with his father for his treatment.
During the treatment, when a doctor asked Yash what he was doing in New York, he told him about the film and said that it was about a man who was dying and had come here for his treatment. The doctor couldn’t believe that they were making a film about something that had become their reality. Karan recalled his father saying, “Yes. What is happening to me is what the film is about.” In that moment, Karan noted his father’s sense of humour and recalled, “I thought, trust my father to have a sense of humour even at such a time.”
When he came back to Mumbai, Karan shared that his father was still in New York for his treatment. And when he eventually came back to Mumbai, he was awarded many Lifetime Achievement Awards across the award season, and Kal Ho Naa Ho too, had been declared hit making it a hat-trick for Dharma Productions.
Meanwhile, the coffee cup reader who had initially told Karan to stay beware of the impending tragedy, had told him that his father won’t survive and had only 10 months to live.
After months of treatment, Yash Johar passed away in June 2004.
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