Taare Zameen Par
- Story of a Contemporary Indian Artist

‘Every child is special’, says the subtitle of the much acclaimed directorial debut of the noted Indian film actor Aamir Khan, Taare Zameen Par. The film deals with the story of an eight year old dyslexic child, Ishaan Awasthi and his gaining of confidence through the caring approach of a drawing teacher, Ram Shankar Nikumbh at the residential school where Ishaan is forced to join as he proves to be a misfit and below average student in a regular school. Like the parents of a competitive world, Ishaan’s parents too want him to be excellent in everything, which the poor dyslexic child fails to do. None sees his colorful fancying, his ability to translate it into painting and his conquests in the world of imagination. He is like Bill Watterson’s Calvin, who can conjure up numbers like ‘Eleventeen Forty Twelve’.

A still from Taare Zameen Par

After seeing this movie, Delhi based artist Manjunath Kamath called me up and said, “Johny, you should watch this movie. All the artists are watching it because they think that it is their story.” Spicing it up with his genuine humor he added, “Now, the so called ‘good for nothing’ kids are encouraged to start painting as most of the parents see that it could be a better career option. Things are changing man!” True, people have started taking art as something that helps their children to mould a future. Art is no longer a lazy child’s choicest distraction. Nor is it a dyslexic child’s redemptive therapy. Aamir Khan has touched the right chord: Every Child is a special child and art is the his ‘special’ gift.

Aamir Khan through visual parables tells the parents who consider their children as the ponies in a race course, that the most famous personalities in history were ‘special’ in certain ways; Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Abhishek Bacchan, Ram Shankar Nikumbh (character) himself were dyslexic and the list is never ending. Why do our artists feel that Ishaan Awasthi in some way represent their own childhood? Given a choice any artist would recount those endless hours of classroom torture that he/she underwent during the childhood. Remember the boy in Rabindranath Tagore’s story; the boy who wistfully looking at the pouring rain and wishing that this rain would assure the absence of his tuition teacher.

I remember myself as a child frantically browsing through the comic books and mythological volumes in order to postpone the ‘reading’ of textbooks. I remember a teacher sending me out of the classroom regularly for not bringing a particular text book, which I loathed even seeing. I will recount a few incidents of my artist friends who did exceptionally crazy things when they were children. Shibu Natesan was a highly gifted child but always scraped through his class examinations. On the school final examination (which is considered to be the decisive marker in a young student’s life) Shibu left the exam hall pretty early only to catch up with the release of a Malayalam Movie. That year he ‘beautifully’ failed. Chintan Upadhyay spent most of the time outside the classroom as he was called ‘Gandaa Baccha’ (Dirty Boy) by all the teachers. He never bothered to spend time in the classrooms. Manjunath Kamath recounts his experience as a boy wanting to participate in all the extra curricular activities for the simple reason that it would ease him out of rigorous class hours. But the teachers always told this boy who offered his service to anything but studies, to shut up and sit down. “You are incapable of excelling in anything. Sit Down,” that was the regular comment he was familiar with.

Can it be called rebellion? May be in an organized sense, these childish pranks are not rebellions. But these kids have an innate feeling to do something different because they know they are different. Their articulation of difference is seen in their acts, playing, acting, singing, mimicking, painting, sculpting, writing etc. They rebel against the norms in a performative way. They even rebel against their own creations. Shibu used to make clay figures of gods and goddesses, paint them with enamel paints taken from his father’s studio and then roll them down to a stream that flowed under a wooded hill. Iranna used to make god images on the road only to derive pleasure in seeing them run over by passing vehicles. Fidel Castro in his autobiography says that he always wished to rebel but he did not know how to do it. Hence, to a teacher who slapped him for no reason, young Fidel said, “If you slap me again, I will slap you back.” That was the doomsday for the abusive teacher.

Coming back to the Bollywood representation of special children gifted with artistic abilities, it should be said that our society as a whole is becoming increasingly aware of the role of art and artists. The sarcastic, ironic, stereotypical representation of art and artists as creatures of degeneration and anarchism is now almost out. Artists are represented in Bollywood films as people with imagination, talent, ambition, recognition and riches. They are no longer the bearded anarchists puffing away cheap cigarettes and existentialism. Dil Chahta Hai was one of the films during this decade that portrayed artist as a living being with no caricature frills all over. Akshay Khanna acted out the role of a passionate artist in the film. In a recently released blockbuster laugh riot ‘Welcome’, the hunk Akshay Kumar is shown as an executive working with an art auction house. In the same film there is an attempt to caricature the artist through the character of Anil Kapoor who is an underworld guy with some artistic ambitions. He makes ‘abstract paintings’ at outdoors, surrounded by bodyguards and glam girls, and explains what his paintings mean. In Taare Zameen Par, we see Aamir Khan portraying the role of an art teacher who could redeem a pathological society. He could even rope in the veteran artist, Lalita Lajmi in and as Lalita Lajmi in the movie and it gives a lot of legitimacy to it through art as a ‘nurturing/caring/sharing/appreciating/judging Mother.’

In the mainstream Bollywood film sets, art has always played a considerable role. Whether it be the heroine’s bedchamber or the hero’s palatial house, be it the poor and suffering artist’s studio or the discotheque where the item girls flaunt their gravity defying gyrating skills, works of art are seen as ‘props’. Considering the aesthetic standards of the ‘pop corn chewing, coin throwing’ mass of the yester years, these art works always had been either academically perfect (drawing oooohs from the audience), the typical Indian painting with village belles in wet white clothes amply displaying their booties (look at the portrayal of Zeenat Aman in Satyam Sivam Sundaram), landscapes (as passing beauties) or abstract works (drawing disdainful smiles from the audience). Now things are changing. During late 1990s Tyeb Mehta’s ‘Kali’ was seen in a villain’s den in the blockbuster movie called ‘Mohra’ (Could that be a look alike?). In 2007, Indian super star Rajni Kant was seen dancing in front of several world famous museums including the Bilbao Musuem, Spain, in his international chartbuster ‘Shivji: The Boss’. In Dil Chahta Hai, one actual art exhibition was seen as a backdrop of emotional scenes. In Madhu Bhandarkar’s Page 3 too we witnessed several art dos.

It is high time that the Indian film makers take art seriously in their films- not as the life of the artists as themes (Remember the films like Life with Picasso (Anthony Hopkins), Andy Warhol (David Bowie), Jean Michel Basquiat (Jeffrey Wright), Jackson Pollock (Ed Harris)- Shall we able to produce movies like this on the lives of the Indian artists?) but as visual references so that more and more people could get introduced the world of Indian contemporary art. Bollywood and other regional moviedoms could do it because cinema still remains to be the most popular and influential art forms in India. There are several art college pass outs like Sabu Cyril working as efficient art directors. They could bring in this positive change. Before closing I would like to refer the films of M.F.Husain, Gajagamini and Meenaxi: The tale of Three Cities. These films talk about an individual artist’s philosophy of beauty and life and they do not talk about art as a contemporary discourse. What MF Husain could not do, Aamir Khan could do- Aamir Khan brought art very close to the lives of the great Indian middle class. Salman Khan, the Gandaa Baccha of Bollywood recently turned to painting. As Salman has a huge fan following amongst the middle and lower middle class youth, his efforts to be a painter would have seep in effect, let us hope. Now it is Bollywood’s turn to emulate art.