When stars are close to earth

Tare Zameen Par the latest creation of Amir Khan is a film on disability management racing with the speed of a crime thriller . It is a three hour soul stirring experience leaving each one of us with some reasons to question our human values in the matter of child rearing. And what a way to deliver a message on mainstreaming of differently abled children. A child with symptoms of dyslexia, parents struggling to cope with the challenges of city life failing to take notice of the differently abled child’s sufferings and a teaching environment with shades of an animal breeding centre , everything appears to be so familiar . Two decade old memories of the days when the kids were youngsters ,struggling with the competitive spirits of junior section in the rich and famous school in New Delhi flooded my mind. And also the chilling realization that perhaps like the parents in the film we too despite our progressive and liberal pretensions allowed ourselves to be unduly harsh to the child under social pressure. Perhaps the perpetual tension in which we put the kids over small failures in academic performance were not so necessary. And perhaps there are so many others who are still not aware of the cruelty which we afflict on our children in an effort to make them standout, to make them work like machines, in order to make them achieve goals which we ourselves could not .

And then the teachers and these schools with high sounding names and their stylish buildings…… are they serving the cause of humanity or sucking the vital elements of humanity from tender souls in fulfillment of the desire to shine and in turn gain high value in market. Do these teachers have any thing to offer for a child whose certain faculties are less developed ? How many teachers are equipped to handle a child in trauma? And do we keep count of teachers who have traumatic effect on young minds?. The impact of the film on a sensitive mind is like a quick spell of thundershowers which leaves everything totally drenched with questions of such nature.