A mosquito called Karan Johar and a super-giant called Mohammed Rafi.

Raju Korti
Ranbir loves Anushka but she meets with an accident and is thought of as dead. Aishwarya comes in RK's life after a break-up with Fawad and they fall in love with each other (what else?). Meanwhile, Aishwarys is critically ill and the only (intelligent) person who knows this is herself. Anushka comes back into Ranbir's life (what else) but meets with an accident again. A dying Aishwarya donates her organs and saves Anushka's life. Ranbir and Anushka name their child after Aishwarya. Fawad does what we all expect him to do even otherwise -- commit suicide.

Thus ends a stupid, puerile story which seems to be the work of some mentally retarded person. For someone who has a meritorious history of dishing out one trash film after the other -- and each worse than the earlier -- Karan Johar maintains his consistency to produce first class garbage as only he can. Right! Consistency is the virtue of an ass. Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham (which I fondly describe as Kabhi Khujli Kabhi Ghaam), Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, My Name is Khan, Student of the year -- and the torture continues -- come from the stable of a person who thinks no end of his alleged intellect and conscience. For all the articulate gibberish that he spouts in his silly interviews and ridiculous coffee-talk shows with frightening regularity, Johar's capacity to make biodegradable films is unmatched and legendary.
With Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, Johar keeps his congruence with absurdity and shallowness. But its not about his towering flap-doodle that I am interested in. His latest three-hour non-sense has a dialogue attributed to Anushka Sharma in the film: "Mohammed Rafi gaate kam aur rotey jyada the." This 44-year-old yet-to-grow-up dickhead was hardly eight when Rafi passed away and his Lahore-born father Yash Johar was just a non-descript face in the 4-lakh massive crowd that had gathered to pay its respects to India's greatest playback singer on the day he left the entire nation weeping. It was the biggest funeral in the history of Mumbai.Thirty-six years later, it has occurred to Johar's juvenile mind that Rafi sang less and sobbed more. The trouble with most of our film-makers is they expect people to gobble up, accept and appreciate their shit in the name of artistic expression. And if freedom of expression is the ultimate foundation of all debates, I will stand up to say my shit is most certainly better than yours.
If expressing an unreasonable opinion is artistic expression, our film-makers who never fail to carry the "liberal" badge on their sleeves, should take even the bitterest of criticism in their stride but what this tribe wants is only accolades. You criticise them and they start snorting like mad bulls, freedom of expression be damned. Let Johar enjoy as many births as he wants but he won't be able to do even a hundredth of what Rafi did in just five years of his forty-year career. Worst is he has demeaned an illustrious and legendary figure from his own crassly commercial industry. If this is what he thinks about a skyscraper of his own profession, one shudders to think what he thinks of others. That is if he can at all think and if what he calls inside his head as his mind.
I am sure like other ill-informed and half-baked of his tribe, this man will come out with a specious excuse that it is just a dialogue in the film and people need to understand from that perspective. What an astonishing drivel!
I understand one of the characters in the film wants to be a Mohammed Rafi. That's fine. Whether one wants to be a Rafi, Kishore or Sanu is one's call but that doesn't give one a licence to derogate anyone. If someone being inferior to others is the yardstick of others being superior, this man doesn't have a right to be anywhere near even a photo-shoot. The dialogue insulting Rafi is a cheap, poor and dreadful publicity stunt just to corner attention and capitalise on a debate that follows.
As a Rafi historian, I have chronicled the life and times of this great man in my book "God's Own Voice" and I can assure you that time produces such a personality only but once. Johar's father had not even thought of him (Karan) when Rafi was already the established real hero behind the gas-filled screen heroes. It is a measure of Johar's asininity that he has chosen to utter a name that his garrulous and slimy tongue is not worthy of. He himself belongs to the made-by-the-asses-for-the-masses clan.
For many, blasphemy and sacrilege are an easy option to gain limelight.Worse still, they know there is no shortage of label-head liberals who will defend them should they land in soup. Karan Johar chose to do it with a titan who is not alive to respond to it. Knowing Rafi, I am sure he would have maintained a dignified silence even in the wake of such a needless and abusive provocation but this deranged film-maker probably doesn't seem to know that Rafi's fans who are legion and only keep multiplying by the day, are not going to take this monumental hogwash in their stride. To them Rafi is a demi-god, no less.
Just how stupid it has got to is evident from the fact that the name of the film draws from Rafi's own song from CID (1956) "Ae dil hai mushkil jeena yahaan" which is still the signature song on Mumbai. If Rafi has sobbed in that song, Johar and his co-writer need an urgent appointment with an ENT expert. And maybe with a psychiatrist too.