Bollywood filmmaker Karan Johar on Sunday confirmed that he was now a father to twins through surrogacy. “I am ecstatic to share with you all the two most wonderful additions to my life, my children and lifelines – Roohi and Yash,” he said in a statement on Twitter. “I feel enormously blessed to be a parent to these pieces of my heart.”

The Dharma Productions chief thanked the surrogate mother, saying he would be “eternally grateful” to her for fulfilling his “lifelong dream”. “She will always remain in my prayers,” he said, adding that he would raise the children with the help of his mother. “This is an emotional yet well thought out decision, which I took after considering all the responsibilities that come with being a parent.”

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Johar is now the second single father in Bollywood to have children through surrogacy. In June last year, actor Tusshar Kapoor had made news after having a son by a surrogate.

The twins were born last month in Mumbai’s Masrani Hospital in Andheri, the same institute where Bollywood actor and Johar’s close friend Shah Rukh Khan’s younger son AbRam was born to a surrogate mother, The Times of India had reported. The filmmaker registered the names of his newborns with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation on Friday, according to The Indian Express reported.

Surrogacy became a heavily debated subject in India after, in November 2016, the draft Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill containing guidelines for the practice, was introduced in the Lok Sabha. The proposed legislation bans commercial surrogacy in the country and bars payments to surrogate mothers, in addition to prohibiting singles of both foreign and Indian origin from resorting to surrogacy to have children.

In his recent memoir, Johar had written about surrogacy:

I am thinking about having a child. It will, of course, have to be a surrogate child, or I will have to adopt. These are the two options that I have in front of me. I have all kinds of decisions to make, such as: Am I ready to be a father? Am I ready to slow down and take care of another life? Obviously, being a parent comes with a huge amount of responsibility. Am I ready for that? Am I emotionally ready? Am I pragmatically ready? Am I professionally ready to slow down and make that space? More than anything else, how will I be as a parent?

The only one thing I feel is that because I have nurtured so many young careers, a sense of parenting has crept into me, so I may be ready. So am I thinking of my life as my career? But I am not one of those who rests on his laurels. I always say, move ahead!

When one job gets done, you move on to the next one. I am that kind of person. I have never sat and re-evaluated my life or my career. It’s like how I am thinking now about what’s going to happen. I don’t want to die without a sense of family around me. And selfishly, I want to have a child who will take care of me because I am afraid of growing old alone.

That’s my greatest fear. Death doesn’t scare me, life sometimes does.