Karan Johar opens up about Yash and Roohi inquiring about their birth mother and talks about challenges

Karan Johar recently shared that his twins, Yash and Roohi, have started asking about their mother. The filmmaker, who welcomed his children via surrogacy in 2017 and raises them with his 81-year-old mother Hiroo Johar, revealed that the kids affectionately refer to his mother as 'mumma'. However, they have begun to realise that she is actually their grandmother, pushing Karan to seek guidance on how to navigate this weird family dynamic.

In a conversation with Faye D’Souza, Karan expressed the challenges of explaining such complexities to young children, saying, 'It is a modern family. It is an unusual circumstance, so now I am also dealing with the questions about whose stomach was I born in? But mumma is not mumma really, she is my grandmother’. I am going to school, to the counsellor, to ask how do we navigate the situation. And it is not easy, being a parent is never easy.'

Single parent reponsibilities

Reflecting on his role as a single parent, Karan often discusses the loneliness he experiences due to not having a partner. He acknowledges that despite his busy schedule filled with work and surrounded by friends and family, there is a void that only an intense romantic relationship can fill. He adds, 'I have two children. Obviously, I’m co-parenting them with my mom (and) not with a partner. That means I have a single status. And that single status is filled in with a lot of work. I push in so much work in the day that I don’t think about that status. That’s what we all do when you’re single, you’re lonely and you’re perhaps not wanting to address that loneliness. You pack in your day with things because you want to distract yourself from the core. Then you believe that if you have great friendships and a great family life, it can actually compensate for the lack of a passionate intense romantic relationship. Nothing can replace that,' he said at an event.

'Life is full of boxes – parents fill one, children fill the other, friends fill the other. But there’s a box for an intense love romantic relationship that if you don’t experience there is a sense of incompleteness that nothing can ever fulfill.' That loneliness can actually really kind of consume you and it has consumed me.

He admitted, 'I have not been in a relationship for very many years. I know what that really feels like. Fortunately, I can live vicariously through cinema. I can create those stories, and characters that perhaps that I would like to either romantically be inclined with or just fulfill that part of love and romance in my life. Not everybody has that leverage,' he said.

Karan's emotional tribute:

On their seventh birthday earlier this year, he penned an emotional tribute, calling Yash and Roohi the 'brightest sunshines' in his life and thanking Hiroo for her unwavering strength and maternal care towards the children. He wrote, 'Happiest birthday to the brightest sunshines (x2) of my life! My life is forever changed, for the best with you two coming into it with your goofy and adorable laughs, unadulterated sass towards ME and of course – an abundance of love to give to the world! Never change…grow up but never change.' 'And thank you to my mom, who is forever the strength of our family…and being a mother figure to Yash & Roohi! Love you forever mom,' he added.

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