A curious paradox plagues the heart of Karan Johar’s memoir, An Unsuitable Boy. Over the course of more than 200 pages, it sets out to make interesting someone who, by his own admission, has been an eager conspirator in making himself interesting and accessible to the Hindi film-devouring masses. If you’re already tuned into Johar, what more can the book offer, you wonder. If not, what does this book have in store for the indifferent, somewhat intrigued reader?

Early in the book, recalling the days after Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’s success, Johar says: “I came across like somebody who could make good copy (...) So I did a lot of press and built a lot of relationships with the media (...) I was happy to be in the limelight. It’s something I’ve never shied away from, even today. I realise that it’s a big-brand offshoot.”

Thinking of himself as a big brand is something Johar does well. But, inevitably, there are tensions when his brand-building ambitions translate into a book version of his life till now. After all, he is only 44, and much of his life has been — for lack of a better idiom — an open book. How much fresh ground can be uncovered?

Johar’s insistence on being disarmingly candid at all times means that many of the incidents narrated in the book — running away from boarding-school at the behest of Twinkle Khanna, to whom he also offered the lead role in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai; losing his virginity in New York at the age of 26; asking for costume changes for a beggar girl; living in a South Bombay bubble and mistaking the Seven Bungalows area in Andheri for actual seven bungalows — are already public knowledge, especially to those who follow Johar’s television talk-show Koffee with Karan, or read his articles and interviews.

It is these tensions that frequently threaten to scupper the book. Fortunately, Johar’s book is helmed by Hindustan Times’s Poonam Saxena, who occasionally provokes interesting insights into his life. Once the awkwardness of the prose — it reads like a long interview, evidently by design, rather than a memoir — becomes only a minor irritant, the book finds its groove.

The Johar of interesting anecdotes comes alive as a person through three distinct revelations. First, through his struggles with his sexuality and his “effeminate” body language. To counter the latter, Johar took classes in voice training on the sly during college, to cultivate a baritone — could it be that an early discomfort with his sexuality informs his diffidence even today? Second, his marketing nous is a frequent point of pride, and rightly so. Right from marketing himself to finding ingenious ways to market bad movies (such as adding item numbers to Kaal) and good (offering a catchy tagline for The Lunchbox). Third, his honesty in admitting to the relationships that have soured, and matured, is remarkable. Right from his fallout with Nikhil Advani during Kal Ho Naa Ho to his quiet acceptance of an evolved, yet now abridged relationship with childhood friend Apoorva Mehta, who runs Johar’s production company Dharma Productions. The trajectory and trivia of his relationship with Shah Rukh Khan is of interest to fans of both, but offers little beyond banalities and frivolities.

Moreover, despite the reams written about Johar’s sexuality, and what he should, or should not do in the fight for bringing dignity to homosexuals in India, the book offers a quiet and sufficient answer to those who care to listen. The only bit that irks is the title, a hat-tip to Vikram Seth’s famous novel. Seth, who has championed gay rights openly, deserved a more willing compatriot in Johar.

At all times, Johar’s expert tugs on the strings of his public life influence the narrative. The classic prodigal son’s trajectory is unmissable. Johar does his best to underline both his struggles as well as his present nonchalance. Occasionally, when he lets his guard down, we discover, through their brief introduction into the text, glimpses of his mortal coil. His relationship with his mother, for instance, is mentioned often in passing, or occasionally in contrast to his easily malleable father (whose death is poignantly recalled in the book). But it’s also a relationship Johar jealously guards. He lives with her, mentions his fear and admiration for her, yet reveals far too little of her.

At the end of the book, Johar reveals a growing sense of his mortality: “I am in and out of hospitals because my mother sometimes keeps poor health (...) Now I think, would I be one in that wheelchair two or three decades later? (...) Then I wonder, do I want a child just because of my needs? Then I realise the truth, yes, it’s just for me.”

Johar’s memoir is an unwieldy pyramid of memories. His earliest movies are often remembered in rich, frequently hilarious detail — such as Johar as costume director, giving Khan butt-fitting Levi’s jeans during the shooting of Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge. But his most recent film, Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, barely receives more than a mention. We are only informed, in foggy detail, how the film itself is influenced by Johar’s struggles with coping with unrequited love. This will irk those who seek to delve into the mind behind his most recent work, including Ajeeb Dastan Hai Yeh, his short in the 2013 anthology film Bombay Talkies.

Johar, then, somewhat disappointingly, delivers an extended version of the person we already know. However, we can always seek solace in the length of the book, which falls well short of Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham.

Shubhodeep Pal is a writer and photographer