Taare Zameen Par – Is Every Child Special?

First posted on Desicritics on 31st August, 2008.

Aamir Khan’s Taare Zameen Par is a wonderful movie, but for its tagline. “Every child is special,” has now become part of the Used-Taglines-List which has been growing with each movie. I will wait for the day when our film-makers no longer feel compelled to contribute to the list.

If you think about it, Taare Zamee Par is about a special child in various senses of the term. Dyslexia is Ishaan Awasthi’s curse and also his gift (if we go by the Davis Dyslexia Association International). Ishaan’s gift, in a more direct sense, is painting. That gift makes him prodigious, not just special. The movie proves the specialty of that child to the rest of the world, not just to his parents.

A movie that fits this movie’s tagline is yet to be made. That movie would be about a normal child without disabilities nor special talents, a child who is not specially abled either in the literal or in the euphemistic sense, and if things need to be made worse, is plain mediocre. But then, how will it really work? It perhaps won’t.

“Every child is special,” is a trite remark that we are all obliged to believe. It has been so often used, without meaning it, that we don’t stop to think if it’s true, nor to think if we believe in it. Even if someone stops to think, they are haunted by guilt and fear that proving it, justifying it, rationalizing it, or even questioning it may be heretic.

There is a proverb in Telugu: kAki pilla kAkiki muddu. A baby crow is special to the crow. Not to every or most or many crows mind you, but to the parent crow. Children are special to their parents. To the rest of the world in most cases, especially to the parents of other children, they are simply others’ children, sometimes annoying ones.

That’s alright. Every child need not be special to everybody. Adults are not. Though it would be nice to have more, any person needs just one other person to make them feel special.

Image Source: Taare Zameen Par Official Website

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