Book Review: Koffee With Karan

By Joginder Tuteja, Bollywood Hungama News Network

'Koffee With Karan' - One wonders whether Karan Johar himself is aware about this book being published. Agreed that he has been all busy with Dostana and yet-to-get-on-floors My Name Is Khan, but it is rather surprising that he hasn't uttered a single word on 'Koffee With Karan', the book which has found it's way into the shelves. This is a book which publishes the script of some of the select celebrity chats that Karan Johar engaged with in his extremely popular television show by the same name which has been running season after season. A good idea indeed which is let down completely due to poor layout and presentation!

That's right. What could well have been an engaging exercise is relegated to being a chapter-by-chapter account of what happened in each of the episodes; just like it would happen in a school text book. In fact the layout format of 'Koffee With Karan' appears to be a school/college guide with an unimaginative design, boring presentation and some tiresome read.

Of course, on the face value it did seem like a good idea i.e. to present the scripts of all the episodes verbatim for readers to cherish in case they have missed seeing them on the telly. In fact, even for those who have seen the episodes already, it may not have been a bad idea to revisit all the fun, humor and scandals that were unveiled in trademark Karan style. However, it is choice of publication house which is the piece of the villain here since it doesn't even try to benefit from the big opportunity it had in hand and instead merely places the entire script in a chapter after chapter format.

While the conversational text does become cumbersome after a point (there are close to 550 pages in the book), what makes it readable to some extent are the snippets that are placed page after page which highlights some of the quotable quotes. In fact I found myself only going through them after a point in time since that seemed to be good enough for me to gather any 'masala', if at all it was present in any episode. Beyond this, 'Koffee With Karan' turns out to be a book which one may want to finish one chapter at a time in one's spare time. In nutshell, hardly a book which classifies itself as 'can't be put down till the last page is through' kinds.

For those who are interested to know the episodes that the book covers, the celebrities being covered are Shah Rukh, Kajol, Rani, Kareena, Preity, Saif, Aishwarya, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Fardeen, Zayed, Gurinder Chadha, Farah Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Gauri Khan, Suzanne Roshan, Bipasha, Lara, Ekta Kapoor, Sunita Menon, Sushmita, Sanjay Dutt, Rakhi Sawant, Sunny Deol, Bobby Deol, Shabana Azmi, Shobha Dey, Rahul Bose, Konkona Sen, Priyanka Chopra, Arjun Rampal, Vivek Oberoi, John Abraham, Malaika Arora, Amrita Arora, Neetu Singh, Rishi Kapoor, Esha Deol, Shahid Kapoor, Hema Malini and Zeenat Aman.

Some of the quotes that made 'Koffee With Karan' the celebrity show it was are reproduced as below:

"The strangest thing people wonder about me is whether I am a homosexual or bisexual. You know, I cannot have two kids by heavy petting" - Shah Rukh Khan

"Anil Kapoor was the worst dancer I have ever worked with" - Farah Khan

"I often love to hate Aishwarya" - Sanjay Leela Bhansali

"I believe that doctors would give you what God could not" - Rakhi Sawant

"Good girls go to heaven; naughty girls go everywhere" - Amrita Arora

"Vivek Oberoi is the most over rated actor in Hindi cinema" - Sanjay Leela Bhansali

"People came to see Bipasha Basu in Jism; no one came to see me" - John Abraham

"Women's feet turn me on" - Sanjay Dutt

"Aamir Khan told me that I was doing Sameer's character all wrong in Dil Chahta Hai" - Saif Ali Khan

"Aishwarya Rai is the worst dressed Indian woman" - Shobha De

"90 percent of Indian cinema is crap" - Rahul Bose

"I am affirming that the casting couch for men exists in the modeling world" - Arjun Rampal

"The best part about being a superstar is that you can wear the most outrageous of clothes and they say 'it's in!'" - Amitabh Bachchan

Of course quite a few of these quotes were made months back when the episodes were telecast (and may have even lost relevance today) but nevertheless they do make for a spicy read at places. In the end, 'Koffee With Karan' isn't even the kind which would turn on the biggest of the movie buffs. At maximum, its readership is restricted to the select few who have been absolutely clueless about how the show 'Koffee With Karan' looked like (difficult to imagine such a breed!) or those who were in love with the show and want to go through the chapters due to sheer nostalgia.

Price: Rs. 395/=

Rating: **

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