'Have gone shopping for my mother to buy a bra,' says Karan Johar while talking about the 'bra' scene in his film

There’s a scene in Karan Johar’s Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani when Ranveer Singh’s character Rocky goes for lingerie shopping with Alia Bhatt’s mother. What follows is an awkward situation when he has to wear a bra and that’s quickly followed by a scathing monologue by Churni Ganguly. Johar, at the press meet of the film, spoke about how this scene was sourced from his own personal experience.

He revealed, “I’ve gone shopping for her (mother) to buy a bra and it’s never been a problem with me. But I do know that while I did it there were friends, who were with me and were horrified that I was actually doing this and why I wasn’t designating this job to a female friend of mine. And I was like, ‘Why?’ It was asked by my mother, so why would I send somebody else to do it?”

He added, “It could be a bra, it could be any other item. For me, that scene felt organic, also because I knew there was discomfort around it. There’s a line where Churni says ‘sadiyon se aurtein mardo ke chaddiyan ghis rahi hai, aur tum ek bra ko nahi touch kar sakte (Women have been washing men’s underwear for centuries, and you can’t even touch a bra)’. That, too, was very definitive of what people feel about it.”

In a recent interview with Film Companion, Johar also spoke about being effeminate during his childhood and how no one told him there was anything wrong at that time. The context of the conversation was Tota Roy Chowdhury’s character in Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, and the filmmaker said it had shades of his own real life experiences.

He said, “It’s also about things I have believed personally. As a child, I was very effeminate and I used to dance in my own room to Hindi songs. My father used to watch and clap. Every time his friends came, he would say Karan ‘Woh dance dikhao sabko (show them the move).’” “No one told me there was anything wrong at that time. So I grew up thinking (that) this is fine. Much later when you go to college you realise when you carry that through and do those moves, and people look at you and laugh.”