With every replay on TV, I realise why Kank did not work. Yes, there was too much crying, too much gloss for a story that should have been told intimately but certain moments stay with me till date. Moments before her wedding,  a bride sits alone on a bench, wondering if marriage based on friendship can quench her hunger for the real thing called `Mohabbat.” 
Dev (Shah Rukh Khan), a cautiously optimistic stranger chats  her up and tells her that Mohabbat is no longer what it used to and that it is wise to make do with what is on offer than to wait for something that may never appear. His  wife, for instance,  may not be his one great love but they have built a happy life and that should suffice, right? Wrong, because years later, the bride (Rani Mukherjee’s Maya) has morphed into a frigid wife while her mostly loving and occasionally frustrated husband Rishi (Abhishek Bachchan) grapples helplessly with her unresponsive heart and body and wonders why he never sees a reciprocal leap of joy in her eyes. In a moment of extreme hurt, he screams, “When was the last time we came close, touched, became intimate?’’
Dev is now a limping cynic, routinely poking holes in the pretences 
of happy domesticity in his own largely mechanical marriage to Rhea  (Preity Zinta)who loves him despite his failures and her success but has no time for their family.
Are we dreaming or was this really a Karan Johar film, telling us that a little love obviously does not go a long way and a lifetime can seem a long time when your heart is not where it should be in a marriage? 
Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna, hit me as unexpectedly as  a slither of lightening on a hot summer day. Yes, the dreamsmith finally got his hands dirty with reality despite the lush frames, the long stemmed roses, sequinned sarees, autumn leaves, snow flakes, superstars strewn all around like confetti, the glitz of Manhattan and the chutzpah of Prada. But no, it was no longer all about loving each other to death. 
Johar dared to treat an extra-marital affair without hypocrisy or judgement and allowed it to end on a dignified, positive note. 
The film did not work because it did not make blanket statements about family, morality and marriage and instead gave us a patriarch who asked his daughter-in-law, not for an unrealistic promise to protect the non-existent sanctity of her marriage but that she be realistic and walk away from his son because she does not love him and is probably keeping him away from the love of his life. 
Finally, here was a film where a woman did not have to justify her right to fall in love. Many viewers and critics have questioned why Rani Mukherjee’s Maya  cannot love a husband who adores her and why she falls for an obviously inferior man. These questions are answered in the film  by Shahrukh Khan  who tells the shocked guests during a sit-down dinner, “Relationships are defined by circumstances, not by people.’’ 
Or as Amitabh Bachchan’s outrageously flirtatious but deeply perceptive Sam  says, “Mohabbat aur maut bin bulae mehmaan hote hain.’’ (Love and death arrive as suddenly as uninvited guests in our life).
Infidelity grows organically from the circumstances of the protagonists who stray in the film. They are not bad people. They  just find answering vacuums within each other. Johar spares us nothing as they strike a friendship over innocent cups of coffee and soccer dates and then become illicit  lovers, blurting out their passion for each other, glowering in sexual rage when they see each other with their spouses.
They show us how painful it is to love a woman or a man who belongs to another and to hurt people who trust you and love you.
The young boy who had come to Bangalore to promote K3G and had looked visibly crushed when this writer had asked him why he was not making path-breaking cinema like Farhan Akhtar and Ashutosh Gowarikar, has grown up alright.
After making silky smooth on the surface and occasionally lumpy in the middle, glycerin and chiffon pies  like Kucch Kucch Hota Hai and K3G, he has gone beyond Karva Chauths, weddings and designer funerals. With KANK, Karan Johar may have annoyed the moralists but he shut up all the critics who accused him of playing it safe.