Taare Zameen Par

[I wrote many articles on this blog- most of them criticize India and Indians. Beauty is hard to find in India. There is ugliness everywhere. But, once in a while I get a glimpse of something beautiful. And when I see something beautiful and excellent, I do not fail to celebrate it.]

Few days ago, I saw the movie Taare Zameen Par. It is one of those rare moments when you can really celebrate excellence right here in India. It is a very well made movie. Kudos to Amir Khan, Darsheel Safary and other very good artists who have made this movie worth watching! Photography was excellent, cinematography superb, and screenplay outstanding. Great direction! It moved me, it swayed me. And most important of all, it had a great message!

There were so many great moments in this movie and each moment was captured so well.

The movie is about a kid who just wants to have fun and grow up at his own pace. The movie captures so well each of those glimpses where a kid enjoys the world around him, innocently, and so childishly. The joy of that paint drop landing on Ishaan’s cheek, the urge to jump into the water puddles, dreaming dragons and monsters, are what the kid’s life is made up of. The present day parents, who are keen on pushing their kids to join their rat race, are robbing their kids from enjoying those beautiful moments. Nowadays, I don’t see kids (in cities and towns) playing in the evening. I see them coming home, and then going off to tuition or straight to homework.

The movie shows travails of a young lad who is just being himself, a kid, trying to cope with this ever competitive world. He wants to learn at his own pace. He wants to enjoy the finer things of life, waking up late, dreaming, and just having fun. Ishaan (the protagonist) is a fine artist but suffers from dyslexia. I still believe that this movie could have been made without using dyslexia as an excuse. It could have been any kid who just wanted to enjoy the life around him. The parents are frustrated with Ishaan, who never seems to learn to write or read. He is thrown into a boarding school because he does not conform to the expectations of his parents, his teachers, and his society.

Though it highlights the problem of one kid who stubbornly refuses to conform, there are millions of kids in India who are being told to give up their childhood. The kid’s life is now reduced to a drudgery of learning by rote. In one instance, when the Ishaan explains a Hindi poem in his own way, the teacher urges the students to ‘interpret’ it in exact same words he prescribed. There goes another kid’s creativity and originality down the drain.

Ishaan’s father wants his kid to conform, learn, and succeed. In this world and society, there is no room for deviating from the norms. The parents see their success through the accomplishments of their kids. Parents want their kid to be top engineer, a top doctor, a CEO, or a top sports player. Everybody wants child geniuses; nobody wants a nice human being.

Children tend to grow at different rates, taking their own times, not necessarily confined to the orderliness and timeliness of a curriculum of a school. A kid can grow the necessary skills to enter the mainstream at any age. What he does at a certain age does not determine his performance for the rest of his life. That’s why I keep saying that just because a kid got into a top school does not mean much. It only means that he was good at that age. To assume he would be good for the rest of his life, and to assume that a kid who has gone to an ordinary college would remain ordinary for the rest of his life is quite foolish- but that’s how most Indians measure themselves.

One of the important messages of the movie is that you need to care for your kid. It does not mean you provide food, good school, books, toys, and video games. What it means is that you need to be there and assure the kid that he is quite OK in whatever he does. Every kid needs to be treated special. And kids should end up feeling they are special.

What is important is how the kid perceives this world. Caring parents who encourage, motivate, and applaud everything the kid does while ignoring his many ‘foibles’, ‘mistakes’, ‘flaws’, ‘guffaws’ and ‘inadequacies’, make kids life better. Hopefully, they make better human beings.

This movie conveys some important messages.

# Every kid is unique.

# Care for your kid and encourage him in whatever he does.

# Parents should not measure their kids only by their marks and scores in the exams.

And remember this:

Each kid grows differently at different rates at different ages. A kid who is completely uninterested in studying the alphabet, math or language at certain age may grow to like them at a later age and that’s when he will move at a rapid pace.

Then, there was a strong message from Amir Khan, about some islands where the tree just dies out because people around it curse it. Of course, it must be an allegory, but it has a good message. It’s so easy to kill a soul by constantly discouraging it.

We set our standards based on false assumptions, misconceived values, lofty morals and hypocritical ethics, and try to impose them on our kids, making their lives miserable. Here’s a speech from Lt. Col. Frank Slade from the movie Scent of a Woman. [This is one of my favorite movies – I have seen it more than 20 times].

And I have seen, boys like these, younger than these, their arms torn out, their legs ripped off. But there is nothin' like the sight of an amputated spirit, there is no prosthetic for that. You think you're merely sending this splendid foot-soldier back home to Oregon with his tail between his legs, but I say that you are executing his soul! And why? Because he's not a Baird man. Baird men, you hurt this boy, you're going to be Baird Bums, the lot of ya.

I really liked many aspects of Tare Zameen Par. Thank you Amir Khan, for giving me a piece of excellence to celebrate!

[I actually wrote a longer post interlaced with accounts from my childhood, but then I went on hold myself against posting it for obvious reasons].

Related Posts: Guide to Indian Idiocy I, Bad Parenting- Insensitivity and Indecency, Trying to find beauty in India, Apotheosis of IITs and myth of merit, My Stand on Reservations IV;