This girl, Cleopatra Stratan, is pretty amazing. She became famous when she was three years old (now, she’s five). Already, she has a full-length, double platinum album, music videos, and has sung live concerts. This song, “Ghita” (ghee-tuh) is about a girl asking questions of a friend that has left her in search of opportunity (presumably in the city, or a new land).

It is not difficult to see why this particular song is so popular, especially in Romania. Besides being amazingly cute, the fact that a little girl is singing the song makes us remember those who are ‘left behind’- and those who are left behind empathize greatly with the girl’s situation. In the words of my mother, “our relatives in Romania cannot get closer to the Otopeni airport than this little girl”. Their loved ones have left the country, and the ones left behind are not always able to follow them. Considering the decades of closed borders and communist regimes, low incomes, and the thought of going into a world of unknown languages, technologies, and mentalities, it seems as impossible for any adult to leave the ‘old country’ as it would be for this three-year-old girl. And yet, she misses her love, and is sad and helpless.

LYRICS OF GHITA:

The coat is inside out,
There is no sun above
Nothing is going good
Since I think of Ghita.
But Ghita’s not in town
I asked why he’s not around
It seems to me he’s gone
He’s gone abroad
Hard, I think it’s very hard

Want, don’t know what I want
I know that you like me too
Ghita, what is up with you?
Young, come on in or go

Young, tell me yes or no
Ghita, please don´t anger me
Tell me how your life will be
Ghita, tonight I’m waiting at the wicket
Me at the station I bought a ticket
Come to, but don’t come as you did before
As usually with empty hands…
Who else will and sing for you as I do
Entire evening just getting there
Ghita, show me a girl who’s fond of you
That loves you more as much as I do…

Here is the video. Happy viewing!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teBZmeK9GHI&hl=en]

Four days after I first watched Taare Zameen Par, i went to PVR and watched it again by default. Here is what I felt during the course of the film:

1. I cried on three occasions, exactly when Aamir cries on screen. And this was exactly how it went when I watched the film for the first time, too!

2. I thought Aamir had lessened the impact of the first half by concentrating on dyslexia in the second half, and not on how some children just don’t like to study the usual subjects. Upon second viewing, i don’t think it lessened the impact at all. In fact, because of dyslexia, Aamir could romp home the point that children suffering from this can be brought into the mainstream. Also, Aamir was able to tear down his protagonist’s ‘duffer’ image with the ammunition of dyslexia. Otherwise, he would have landed in a moral dilemma: are schools good or bad for children.

3. I felt the first half was quite long and painfully delightful (quite a feat!) the first time round. But this time, i felt it was short and someone had done some very crisp editing where all the boring bits are taken out. And where some seemed to be separate sequences, he’s done a mosaic and inserted them in the song sequences itself. Succinct thinking.

4. Though I wasn’t a duffer at school, i could still relate to the protagonist because Aamir the director takes us inside the mind of 9-year-old Ishaan Awasthi. Close-ups of the puddle in front of his classroom window, swinging on the gate, seeing alphabets dancing in his book… they all make you feel one with him. There’s so much empathy created in his every naughty act, be it bringing his eyes together when his mother says, ‘Ishaan, concentrate!’ to scowling at his father when his mother calls off his dad’s bluff that he’s leaving home because of his bad showing at school.

5. I thought there is room for improvement, particularly in the second half. But on repeat viewing, i felt the film was good as it was, because i felt the film was viewed, reviewed and revised a million times by the perfectionist Aamir, before it made the final cut.

6. Aamir’s idea of getting Ram Madhvani to direct the song ‘Bheja Kum’ which scored on photography and sophistication that you come to expect from TV commercials, was a great way of infusing some excitement into the frames. Similarly, showing Pandey’s documentary on children when the credits roll at the end was a masterstroke. By this, Aamir is saying that Ishaan could be anyone, a Chinese, a Nepali, a rich or a poor child because Ishaan belongs to just one age: Innocence.

7. On a working day, i saw several people dragging themselves out of bed to watch the 10am show at PVR. Some collegegoers were heard saying, “I know many guys like Ishaan who had the same problem man, and i thought they were just dumb!” If the film was an eye-opener to them, their comments were an eye-opener to me.

8. The distributors problem with multiplex owners over TZP and Welcome has helped TZP atleast at all the PVRs in the country at the expense of Welcome. Take my case. I had gone to see Welcome at PVR in the morning, but at the ticket window, i realised there was only one show of Welcome at 10pm. So the man behind the counter handed me a ticket of TZP instead saying, ‘I have only one ticket left.’ With no other option, I bought it… and didn’t regret!

It tugs at your heartstrings. It makes you reach for the tissues. It makes you laugh. It makes you happy. And you go back home with a lesson for life. That’s the remarkable effect of Aamir Khan’s new film.

Taare Zameen Par celebrates good cinema and at the same time, takes joy in rebelling against every prevailing idiom in the film industry. No flashy sets, no out-of-context songs, no item girls, no distracting side actors who come in to provide comic relief. TZP is a no-nonsense film that makes its way straight to your heart and also stimulates the mind.

Taare Zameen Par isn’t loud and melodramatic. And yet, it manages to keep your tear glands working all through the film, during happy times and poignant moments. It’s a film that tries to take measured steps to make a fervent call for individualism in a society that trips on herd mentality. For a college student, this translates to opting for careers in engineering, medicine or management. For a primary school student, it’s about obtaining A+ grades in all the subjects, except art&craft, sports and other ‘extra curricular’ activities. The problem is precisely this. Streams like Art & Craft and sports are treated as ‘extra curricular’ when they are just as alive and kicking as any other career. In fact, there are more unemployed engineers, doctors and MBA-grads because of this herd mentality leading to a problem of plenty - too many professional graduates and too few jobs. If only, they had followed their heart and did what they do best, then they would have either pioneered a new idiom in employment or taken a job that’s least sought after but most fulfilling to them.

This is the beauty of TZP. The film might be about a dyslexic child who sees mirror images of alphabets and thereby not distinguish an ‘L’ from a ‘7’. But what it teaches you is a lot more. It teaches the teachers that they she should stop treating their students as ‘kids’ and drown out the creativity lying un-used within them by refusing to recognise their individuality. Conformism is killing ‘free’ society. And it is this that is brought out oh-so-beautifully by art teacher Nikumbh (Aamir) and his third standard student Ishaan (Darsheel Safary) who has a face off with his incompetent father and an equally inept school of teachers. It takes a refined teacher like Nikumbh to recognise the inadequacies of Ishaan and help him fit into mainstream society. If not for Nikumbh, Ishaan would have been sent to a special school because of his dyslexia (something that the teachers misconstrued as a sign of him being a duffer and a no good wastrel). And that would mean the end of him and his fantasy world.

Thank you, Aamir for taking us back into our childhood and making us aware of the child within us. Hopefully, this should prevent us from viewing the young ones as ‘just kids’ and actually try to understand them better and usher in a new brave world where individuality becomes the essence of living. Where every job gets equal importance, and where every creativity is given proper encouragement. These are indeed the real signs of human progress.

Thankfully, with Taare Zameen Par, it has already begun.

Just came back after watching TZP and can’t help the eyes welling up everytime i recall the story of a dyslexic child. There are many memorable scenes in the film. It’s a must-watch film that should be made tax-free across the country pronto, so that everyone gets to see the film. Every school should organise free viewings of this film to both teachers and students. And every parent and young adult who will soon be a parent, must watch this film. It’s got soul. And oodles of it. A more detailed review will follow soon. This is only a curtain raiser.
While I was coming back from the movie hall, i made one resolution: to buy the original DVD and not go the pirated route. Aamir has put in his soul for this film. Atleast I can pay him back in this manner.

Bravo, Aamir! You make us all proud! May the power be with you! Always!

When I was a kid, i used to look forward to the annual international children’s film festival. Today, children are the most ignored. Both by their parents and by the filmmakers. In this scenario, when Makdee, Hanuman (whose sequel Hanuman Returns is about to be released) and My Friend Ganesha become box office successes, it makes me happy because this could nudge other filmmakers to make many more children’s films. While Aamir Khan’s new film, Taare Zameen Par, isn’t really a children’s film, it’s about children. Hope this sparks interest in making the world of children a much better place to live in.

Among the recent films, one film that kind of dared to make a commercial film with a child as a protagonist was Nanhe Jaisalmer. Here is my review of it. Njoy!

Yeh ‘chemical locha’ hai bhai mere!

Watts of inspiration. Sensitive storyline. Yards of screen presence by the Nanhe Jaisalmer. That about sums up the film that tugs at your heart strings and makes you cry out of joy. Yes, the film has got a soul and you can feel it. Both the child and the adult can relate to this film and gather enough strength to face any obstacle. That’s the selling point of Nanhe Jaisalmer. It engages you in a child-like manner and entertains the child within. If the camera were to face you, the audience, instead of the film on screen, the possibilities are of an audience smiling gleefully at Nanhe’s antics, his trials, his tribulations, his idiosyncracies, his ‘adult’ and child friends, his pre-occupations and his family connections.

Which brings me to the story.

Nanhe (enacted remarkably well by child wonder Dwij Yadav) is a 10-year-old tourist guide who has been keeping the home fires burning from the age of 6. Since one of his uneducated ‘adult’ friends educate him that people learn to earn, he decided to give schooling a miss because he was able to earn without it. Not just that, he takes pride in the fact and goes about his life with much warmth and love, chewing gutkha and indulging in just one passion: living and dreaming about his friendship with Bollywood actor Bobby Deol. How did this develop, you ask? Well, when Nanhe was just four years, he had done a bit part in Deol’s film where the actor called him his ‘dost’. Since then, this infatuation turned to a crush and then ‘love’ for a long lost friend.

Deol becomes so much of an obsession for Nanhe that it prompts none other than Deol to buckle under the pressure of his innumerable letters – a testimony of which are the vertical strokes marked all over Nanhe’s door that indicate the number of letters he has sent to his star. Before you wonder how Nanhe can write, well, he actually dictates his letters to his loving elder sister who dutifully writes it down and checks back with him every now and then to see if certain phrases need to be changed for political correctness. It is scenes like these that grab your attention and there are many such scenes that showcase the throbbing soul in the film.

There is the scene when Nanhe meets Deol for the first time in the desert sands. Just like Shah Rukh Khan in the climactic scene of Chak De loses his balance and somehow manages to rest on the boundary line advertisement boards when the hockey team he coached wins the World Cup, our Nanhe here actually falls down and sits on his side only to stare at his idol. You feel the same relief that he feels in this frame and you feel happy that his years of dedication has finally borne fruit. But no, if you think that about sums up the story, you are wrong. The story only begins from here. So what’s the rest of the story? Well, just watch the film. Can’t give away the plot, can I?

This is a film that deserves to be shown in all schools and colleges, old age homes and orphanages, and at all the theatres, talkies and tents, and in every nook and cranny of the country. And yes, all the state government’s should make this film tax-free to encourage a lot more people to watch it. It’s about an Indian boy and his dreams, it’s about how his dreams come true and it’s about how there is nothing bigger than a person’s imagination. If you still can’t imagine what the film is all about, my suggestion: just watch it, and preferably with your entire family. It’s not just a children’s film.

What’s more, some bit of it reminds you of Lage Raho Munnabhai and Sanjay Dutt’s ‘chemical locha’. Was the scriptwriter inspired by this? No idea. But there sure seems to be some resemblance. Any which way, it’s a great effort by writer-director Samir Karnik who was assistant director to Vidhu Vinod Chopra and debuted as director with the eminently forgettable Kyon! Ho Gaya Na Pyar in 2002 starring Vivek Oberoi and Aishwarya Rai. Samir could well be labeled the next film factory because there are going to be two more releases within the next six months – his next film Roshan also starring Bobby Deol and Dwij Yadav is slated for later this year while his third film Mera Bharat Mahaan is scheduled for Jan 2008. If Nanhe Jaisalmer is about ‘will’; his next film Roshan is said to be about ‘hope’ while MBM is about ‘pride’.

There are things this film lacks which the hit film Heyy Baby had in abundance. Here are a few suggestions that could have made Nanhe Jaisalmer reign at the Box Office:

1. The publicity of the film was ‘thanda’, including the film poster which just shows a small boy and ofcourse our Deol da puttar. Over here, Heyy Baby scores. Though the film is all about a few months old baby, there is no sign of the baby in the poster. You are conned into believing that the baby in question is Vidya Balan who figures in the poster. That’s a wonderful marketing gimmick that worked. In Nanhe Jaisalmer, maybe they could have got Bobby Deol in two avatars: one is being himself and one where he is a dwarf but his face resembles the actual ‘nanhe’ in the film. What’s more, these two faces could stare at each other while nanhe’s mother and sister look at them from down below. This could have created a lot more curiosity than what is shown in the existing poster.
2. The script is very one-dimensional. It just runs on an even track. There aren’t any twists and turns like you’ve seen in Heyy Baby. Agreed, the story’s premise is inspirational, but the length of 90 minutes demands a lot more surprises to ensure the story reaches a crescendo. This doesn’t happen with Nanhe. So much so that the fantastic climax is diluted because the proceedings that lead up to it don’t just match up.
3. Songs are forgettable and so is the music. There is no lilting music, the kind you heard in Iqbal… this film needed a certain melody that comes up whenever there is something inspirational on screen. It’s a big letdown.
4. Bobby Deol as a 10-year-old’s inspiration is not believable. If it was Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan or Hrithik Roshan, I would have believed it more. But I guess, these top stars would have said ‘no’ to this film which is why the producer had to go to whoever was available.
5. The scriptwriter could have given more life into the characters surrounding Nanhe like his ‘adult’ friends and his mother and sister. This way, he could have had some comic yet memorable songs and scenes that could have lifted the film from its one-track proceedings and infused more character and variety in the film.

Just read a few posts of Aamir on his blog (http://www.aamirkhan.com/blog.htm) and came away happy with the feeling that here is a guy who tries to expell everything he holds closer to him and interacts with the others like any normal human being. I think this is important at a time when stardom is as fickle as it can get. What remains is the kinship you’ve bred and nurtured over the years. It could be with your fans, your colleagues, your business associates or childhood sweethearts…

I went to Aamir’s blog for a reason. Being a journalist, I could have easily procured his cell number and spoken or messaged him on what I had to say, but I thought of taking the road less taken by journalists… and what I saw humbled me. Here was a guy who was talking to his fans through blog entries and chat transcripts. Coming from a much admired superstar of recent times, it’s no less a feat.

Coming to why I was on his blog. I simply wanted Aamir to read my friend Christina’s book whose theme coincides with that of his new film, TZP. So, i wanted him to read the book whenever he could, and to help him get a feel of the book, i also posted my review of the book that appeared on Trendy.in.

This is how the review went… Do let me know what you think, dear readers:

Treat Read

Ginger Soda Lemon Pop for the child within

Soft toys and stick ice-creams. School friends and warm cuddles. A little part of you holds on to those single-digit years long after the 21st birthday party. When Aamir Khan, in his new movie, says every child is special, he echoes what your heart already knew.

In her debut book Ginger Soda Lemon Pop, Christina Daniels — an LSE grad and Wipro employee — articulates the EQ further. Through the ups and downs of a five-year-old girl’s second year in kindergarten, she tells a universal story of love, hate and loneliness with a sense of fun and empathy.

The humorous storytelling is punctuated with the little protagonist’s deep life lessons. Self discovery is a journey; not a destination. The thrill of life is always the strongest when it seems like it’s all going to end.

Written in childspeak, yet profound (”my mother told me that my father was good for nothing. I felt nothing”), the book can be finished in one sitting but lingers long afterwards.

Perfect for those times when you need a hug.

Ginger Soda Lemon Pop by Christina Daniels. Dronequill Publishers. Price: Rs 225. Available at leading book stores nationwide.