“The Sun does arise,
And make happy the skies;
The merry bell rings
To welcome the Spring;
The skylark and thrush,
The bird of the bush,
Sings lounder around
To the bell's chearful sound,
While our sports shall be seen
On the Echoing Green. “
(The Echoing Green, “Songs of Innocence”—William Blake, 1789)
The poem talks about the merry sounds and images which accompany children playing outdoors. But deep down, it has a profound message to convey — the transcendence of joy from sorrows and the life-cycle of individuals — birth, life and finally, death.
A similar profound experience touched my mind a few weeks back, when I watched Aamir Khan’s masterpiece, ‘Taare Zameen Par’ The expectations were set and given Aamir’s penchant for minute details and careful handling of the narrative, it was assured that we have a good story for us to consume with a moderate dose of ‘Indian’ sentiments mingled in it. However, the returns were manifold: Taare Zameen Par (TZP) drove out the hardcore ‘intellectual’ snobbery in me and I feel delighted to accept that watching it was an enobling experience, similar to the one I had the first time I savoured Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali. Logically speaking, the films had nothing in common and from a technical as well as aesthetic perspective, Ray had been an unsurpassed stalwart in the Indian movie industry, but, as I mentioned earlier, logic seems to take a back seat here as the heart rules over the head. Though, deep inside, I can hear a voice saying, “Every head has a heart just like every heart has a head along with it”. And thus we take the plunge…
The film deals with dyslexia; rather, a dyslexic child, Ishaan. Looking from a broader perspective, however, it’s a saga of unachievable childhood dreams and their dreamers, who feel shut off by the world of grown-ups. This cruel world is the one to which we all relate, as a child and also as a parent when we push our children too hard towards achieving our unattained goals.
But to Ishaan, initially in the film, nothing can dampen his spirits and he exemplifies the perfect renaissance of wonder. He was more like Calvin without his Hobbes, though like the famous comic strip, Ishaan sees life in many an ‘inanimate’ object and his pranks make him a potential Tom Sawyer. Ishaan fumbles with arithmetic, jumbles up dictation, tears up his report card, starts an altercation with a bullying neighbour and bunks school to grow-up in a harsh speedy metro. Darsheel Safary is excellent as Ishaan, with his big eyes that shrink in wonder and prank with equal ease—and in the second half, solitude as well. His parents rest upon his elder brother Yohan, who is more like a Dabur Chabanprash achiever. In one of the most memorable sequences of the film, we see Ishaan trying to solve an arithmetic puzzle and ends up with his own “special” way of defining the principles of an algorithm.
However, a question does arise here: If Ishaan has fared so badly so as to spend two years in one class, how come his parents, especially his mother (who takes care of his studies), have not noticed the pain of the child? This seems a little contrived and lays the seeds of a future sequence, where the angelic teacher Ram Shankar Nikumbh (played earnestly by Aamir Khan) gives a fiery speech at Ishaan’s home. The ignorant arrogance of Ishaan’s father and his ever-caring, Google-searching mother’s confusion is overplayed a bit to provide the much-needed contrast of emotion in the film. The parenting angle, as a whole leaves much to be desired, though individually Tisca Chopra’s mother is brilliant and the huge sense of loss of Ishaan in his boarding school leave us moist-eyed, not to mention the superb rendition of ‘Maa’. As it is, it seems designed only for the attempts at correction made by Nikumbh ‘Sir’.
The most interesting part of the film is when Ishaan is sent to a boarding school against his wishes. The flow is so smooth that it takes us a while to realize that this kid isn’t up to his normal pranks. A very strong image has been used here: a hand-drawn flipbook shows a family with one child moving away, as the pages flip. The subtle yet stunning images in the scene leaves us speechless. And by repeating it time and again, the director surprisingly stayed away from making it too boring a trick. Aamir Khan as Nikumbh not only inspires the young Ishaan, but its not hard to guess that he did the same to eight-year-old Darsheel whose stoic calm and dejected shyness puts him in the same league of Ivan in the Andrei Tarkovsky masterpiece The Ivan’s Childhood’. Through many interesting twists and turns Ishaan finally shoots out. The transformation of Ishaan is balanced by a number of musical scores, which at times lead to digressions, though individually they are quite good.
With a series of therapeutic touches, Nikumbh tries to put Ishaan back on track, making him clinch his lost childhood in the process. However, in doing so, Nikumbh wins Ishaan’s heart by confessing the fact that he himself also grew up with the same disability and how his father never recognized it. This again raises a vital question: Does the director think only those who have been victims of Dyslexia themselves can empathize with the condition? The process of getting accepted in a cruel environment is probably more than making plasticine elephants!
Setting that aside, Aamir’s Nikumbh is a modern day Pied Piper right from his first entrance on the screen. The milk of love oozing from his lion heart is like the piper’s magical tune to the ears of children, who had for so long been kept captive by discipline. Unfortunately, this modern day Pied Piper can not drive away the insufferable rituals, taboos and practices in our society, which give rise to the same rat like odours. However, at least, his tune made us aware of this stench.
The biggest blunder of the film, according to me is in the grand finale. Like in so many cases, the director had to give in to the pressure of the box-office The film had till now preached about raising children with emotional and mental space and to allow them to explore their latent talents without the constant use of comparisons. The climax, however, is a competition, where winning amongst hundreds (or may be even thousands) magically turns everything back. This is a real scary feeling. Again, in the fag end, in the parent-teacher meeting, we come to know that Ishaan is making exceptional progress in his studies. This raises the same question: Is academic success the only acceptable currency in the Indian social milieu?
The documentary-like treatment of the the spastic school seems out of place. Content editing is one of the low points in this lengthy film. Economy of shots would have made it lighter, crisper and less repetitive at times but still playing on the emotional chords.
Having said these, let me advise you – don’t watch TZP to dig out logical coherences (or absence of it in some cases as mentioned above), the caveat being you may miss the simplicity and the noble innocence that exudes from its slow pace. Here it expands its horizon – from a ‘kiddie’ film about a not-so-normal child’s winning despite obstacles to larger and deeper issues about parenting and the surrounding social patterns that shape our middle-class thinking. The staggering belief that sways us after watching it is: stop, feel and understand, a rare quality in a commercial Hindi film, where the prophetic messages are so caringly camouflaged. And throughout the almost three-hour film the unflinching champion of the cause remain the children of our society, a reason why a TZP never becomes a ‘Black’ (Dir: Sanjay Leela Bhansali, 2005 ). The last scene, when Nikumbh tosses Ishaan in the air before he boards his car home for vacation is a powerful symbol of final freedom of the boy’s soul from the clutches of inefficiency and failure towards a flying start to success. And don’t miss the end credit lines, which show a documentary footage of under-privileged children -- in every sense. Their smiles and tears all make you realize that you haven’t merely watched a film, you have absorbed something much more – the smiles and tears of life. This is not something which you can brush aside, and this is where TZP scores and wins.
It reminds me of another film which I saw very recently, Kaushik Roy’s Apna Asman. This film is about an autistic child Buddhiraj and the social trauma that he and his parents undergo for not being a ‘normal’ child. Like Ishaan in TZP, Buddhiraj, too, finds painting to be an outlet for his creative persona. The director tries to put forward the ignominies associated with being parents of an autistic child and “how far would you go to make your child a genius?” Once again, as in TZP, the parents (the ever so reliable Irrfan Khan and Padmini) are not ready to accept the short-comings of their son and fail to encourage his painting. In the process, they fall prey to a fake doctor whose magic medicine not only ‘cured’ his brain disorders, but rather, made him a mathematics genius and eventually a science celebrity till he becomes a Frankenstein too hot to handle. And in a stunning exposure, a doctor in the film uses an old Chinese proverb to warn Buddhi’s parents: “Be careful of what you dream for it might come true”.
However, the changes from Buddhiraj to Aryabhatt is deplete of any emotional coherence, it was as if to create a contrast for the purpose of driving the message that the director wants to convey. This is where TZP scores – in showing a human face by letting the plot wait for the events to take their due course. But here again, look beyond the in-coherences and you will not miss the parenting issues that raised. It’s an unusual subject for a Hindi mainstream film. For the parents of neuro-developmental disorders, this film is an eye-opener, for it shows them how to control their own dreams and emotions. Unlike TZP, where there is a scope of improvement for a kid with proper care and love (since the problem is with learning disorder and not with the IQ level of the child), Apna Asman is a dark movie. Since conditions are difficult to change, it’s the attitude of parents which need to be changed in order to cope with their child’s ‘different’ existence. The director wants us to remember that in the end what counts is being a good human being, and that success and fame are secondary to it.
This may be true but society at large thinks otherwise. In one of his interviews, Aamir said: “This industry does not make films for kids. The number is pretty less. Films meant for kids should be made on a regular basis. Every home has a child, so invariably, they too happen to be an important audience for us and we can make so many films for them.” (http://www.rediff.com/movies/2007/mar/15aamir.htm). This is a smart move, trying out a viable economic strategy by churning out family entertainment, while ensuring that it promotes films as both social and as art forms. The constant pressures on the younger generation are on the rise and these two films try to show us how we should act.
It’s we who have to decide.
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