Taare Zameen Par: Symptoms Well Groomed article

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Taare Zameen Par, unlike 70s Amitabh movies or 90s 'challenge society and change it' movies, does not talk about customizing society or using society according to an indivisual's (or a group's) need. It talks about rehabilitation, writes Anirban Lahiri

I loved Taare Zameen Par. It is a film rich with messages, challenging dominant social consensus on minor aberrations (as the child Ishaan Awasthi, AKA Darsheel Safary, consciously, or unconsciously act 'abnormally', i.e, not following the social norms). We, in the audience, feel sorry for him, not knowing where the exact problem lies, only until Nikumbh Sir (Aamir Khan) arrives on the screen. The 'disease' is diagnosed effectively, and the little boy, suffering from that, is cleansed. Very significantly, this film talks about 'symptoms' and the source of 'symptoms', yet finally rotates around symptoms only (when seen on a social level). Nobody in mainstream Bollywood ever tries to understand the root cause, called society. And symptoms appear and reappear. And either a Nikumbh Sir comes to rescue, or an angry young Amitabh comes to challenge the root cause. Does anybody care why the symptoms appear at all or how meaning is generated?

Since the early collective approach to living, people coined numerous theories and philosophies about how man interacted with the society. It was a mystery even for the ancients that we could finally communicate, on some level, even though no two persons saw the world through the same eyes. Of course there are some gaps in all communications. But, ultimately, what we say matters, and not what we want to say (in other words, as practical communication and behaviour gurus say, it is the communicator's responsibility to communicate. A receiver becomes active only after the actual communication stops. No one can hear a stream of consciousness. No one? Perhaps the psychoanalyst can. Well. We are coming shortly to that.)

We voluntarily compromise on freedom and individuality to stay in society. Unlike other animals, we know about those compromises. A collection of such compromises over time, builds up social norms (offcially called 'laws', culturally 'mores'). It is important to note that these norms are meant to be reflected in our interactions with other members of society (or, rather, with society, simply). Society says it is of no great concern what we have in mind unless that comes out in our behaviour. But, is that really possible? We think in terms of social symbols -- words, sounds, images, all artificial things. How much do we react (even 'react', not 'think') on biological impulses? What we think we become, because of our places in society. No two persons can have the same place in this vast ocean of collective livelihood. Literally, society creates us and dictates our lives. And, yet we change society (maybe in a materialistic dialectic process, or in some other ways. That does not matter here.)

Taare Zameen Par, unlike 70s Amitabh movies or 90s 'challenge society and change it' movies, does not talk about customizing society or using society according to an indivisual's (or a group's) need. It talks about rehabilitation, customising an aberration to the norms(what is not an exact copy of the norm, is an aberration. Norm as a consensus does not exist in material world. So, we all are aberrations, though not as glaring as Ishaan Awasthi.) This film recognizes 'difference' and its right to survive in a 'normal' society. This is exactly where this film is a bit different from previous such attempts (except Sampooran Singh and Gulzar's 1972 film Koshish perhaps). 'Difference' is never really accepted in society, not even on screen (because it challenges the consensus -- society's radical binding force). It is always recognized, but never stated or viewed in its individual light. It is always erased (that is why people always kill 'men' from outer space and 'save the world'; or an Elephant Man has to die, in David Lynch's 1980 film, just when that aberrated man becomes 'normalized' and 'presented' in culture), or suppressed (Amitabh becomes a normal 'honest' man at the end of every movies where he does not die.) One Flew Over the Cuckoos' Nest is probably the first post-war attempt in Hollywood to understand the 'difference' (at least, to talk about it). In India, Apna Aasmaan, a small budget film released in 2007, showcased the difference and at the end withdrew all efforts to customise that. However, unlike Taaare Zameen Par, it was unfocused, unscientific, a pot-pourri of holistic medicines, almost tantrik charms and a superboy. What Aamir Khan's film does is to force us to come in terms with our own differences, and to identify with Ishaan, the little champ, in that regard. The film almost starts an argument on retaining the difference too -- a co-habitance of individual differences instead of a monolith of consensus. But, it tracks back to a customisation finally -- a remoulding of the aberration -- as soon as it gives us an inkling of that argument.

Taare Zameen Par ends up almost where it started -- celebrating norms, an all embracing, all pervading normative society that takes in Ishan Awasthi at last. Difference was foregrounded. But, it got erased in the process. We come out of the theatre cleansed, purged and happy. We all at some point of time felt the pressure of living in the confines of this prison called society, that always watches our every individual action. We always appreciated and blamed all theoretical categories and philosophies this neurotic society produces. We always felt all such philosophies are to retain the status quo or power positions. We all became anti-pholosophy or had an 'apolitical' stance (as if politics means rallying under some red or saffron or green flag only). But, we never really cared to question what it means to be normal. A film like Taare Zameen Par effectively shows us that. When we fail to come in terms with nature, we fall sick. We go to clinic then. Similarly, when we differ in a big way with society, we land up either in prison or in a mental asylum (or to a school where Ishan Awasthi goes to serve a term of punishment). And it is significant here that Ishan had a problems with words, with language, with certain symbols. Whatever we do, howsoever we think, we can never evade the final prison house called language that connects us to the rest of the society. A psychotherapist helps us to familiarize with this and other prisons. Finally, the prison becomes our home, and the promise of liberation becomes a bad dream only (as it was for Aamir Khan -- never Ram Shankar Nikumbh really. Always Aamir Khan -- when he first saw Ishan). We get rid of such dreams. We become the analyst/therapist himself (very significantly, Freud and his successotr Lacan said, psychoanalysis attains its goal when the alanysand becomes the analyst.) As a whole, this film takes up the role of a psychoanalyst. And in the process, it celebrates the difference, albeit for a moment only. I love this movie for that moment only. Indian mainstream cinema has never seen such a moment so far. Kudos to Aamir for that. Maybe in future we will get a film where the source of all such symptoms is observed. A deconstruction of society perhaps. I shall wait for that.