World of Random Thoughts

A Brilliant Script or an excellent example of close to perfect direction? Brilliant Performance or a touching theme? Is all so good about Taare Zamin Per – if yes then what left me a ziltch dissapointed

The three hour long movie which makes you ride on all kinds of emotions with a heavily loaded ending compelling to have your eyes go moist, Taare Zamin Per has been speculated by many as Amir Khan’s another shot at the Oscar Nominations – why I mentioned Oscar “ nominations” and not the Oscar is a different debate all together.

I am confused about whom am I writing this post for – ones who have seen the movie or are yet to see the movie. Let me try to deal with both. So ones who have already scene the movie can skip to the next paragraph.

Taare Zamin Per is a movie about a little kid suffering from Dyslexia who cannot make sense for many characters and hence fails to read and write. This brings with it hosts of difficulties like failing in exams, constantly being nagged, cursed and counted-out by teachers, parents. However, this child has amazing observation power, loves to play with colours and enjoys playing with fishes, dogs - a perfect nature boy. Looking at possibilities of being thrown out of school, his parents send Ishant, the boy to a hostel. He takes it as he has punished and sent off to some jail . He is unable to cope with the strict displine, a very cruel mindset and sheer lack of care, and emotion. He sinks into thoughlessness where he stops paintaining, talking to peers and other activities till a his art teacher Amir Khan saves him - the Amitabh Bhachan in Black way.

Ok, now once the story is done with let me come to my point. Something about the movie disappointed me. Yes disappointed me. The tone till now will have been full of praises and so would be once I am done with my grudge.

There was certain expectation mismatch between what theme the promos promised and what the movie dealt with. I was expecting this movie to cater to a much larger population who don’t enjoy studying but have capabilities unlimited – where as post interval the movie took a bend and started talking of Dyslexia and very niche segment of children who are capable of studying, who are “willing “to study but are unable to because of a very fundamental disability to recognize alphabets and relate it to their corresponding meanings. The movie started talking of some apparently disabled people who have the capabilities to live life with the tag of being ‘normal’. Like every normal human also suffer from certain disabilities, they are also suffer for certain disabilities – only problem is that those disabilities are either not common or not easily comprehendible by other fellow “normal” humans. I must admit it’s a brilliant movie, brilliant script and very good cause to address and pointed out to the society that how these people are forced towards being abnormal as “normal” people don’t have time and space to actually lending them the little helping hand.

But as I said the story actually differed from my expectation in terms of people who are “willing “ to study and are not because of certain small problems and how people curse them, count them down, break their confidence to ever stand up against those oppositions.

I would dare to say a line which many may not agree “Education destroys Creativity “. The more learned you are the less creative you are. This is a thing which once my school time friend told me. I can quote an example: Once for XLRI MBA entrance exam XAT had this essay writing part where the topic was “your vision of 2010 – most revolutionary change or innovation “something like this. I was an engineering student who had done my mechanical engineering and school time friend was a commerce graduate - who was not so techno savvy. I wrote about evolution of alternate fuel, falling reliance on fossil fuel, greener fuel in terms of hydrogen burning in oxygen to form bi-product steam as the “pollution” etc. My friend started talking of inter-planet teleportation where man won’t need any rockets or vehicles to move places, a very sci-fi imaginative, most likely to tagged un-realistic by we “scientific studs”. People who are knowledgeable are quick to classify their imagination into practical, feasible, impractical or infeasible. This forces them to restrict their thinking within their “knowledge” domain. Very filmy dialogue – Only those can achieve who dare to dream. So, what turns out be way out of the box success already occurred to many educated people but was outright neglected as not making much sense.

So had the movie talked about brilliant painter, a kid with a very powerful imagination, perception of colors not so inclined to study but spends time to observe things and how he made it big in life that way without opting the regular education – MBA way ,it would have been also a great thing.

I know a brilliant web designer - an absolute genius in creating web designs. But the problem is web designers don’t become project managers, for every 4 coders in a company there is only one designer. Facing this reality, the designer learned to code and started shifting towards coding. This in-effect destroyed a designer.

Education also does something very similar. When I was a kid, I used to memorize things to pass GK exam – Voice of India – Lata Mangeskar, Nightingale of India, Sitar Maestro, Sehnai Maestro – Bismillah Khan, etc. Now we are stepping into an age where there is not many to step on to the mantle. I think this because of strong social pressure to study.

One more thing i think makes sense is that somewhere this movie raised false hope for parents of children not able to compete with “normal” students. I am not saying that they can’t turn themselves around, atleast hope would make them keep up the will to live but false hope in terms of finding that Magic Man. Amir Khan in TZP , Amitabh Bachchan in Black, all point to a magician but none of the movie production group went ahead to answer where to find these men for the needy.

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