Tare Zameen Par: All is Never Lost by Sandhya

(For Sandy and Lucy)

Mind is its own place
But
Some hells/heavens are far too real to be mere perceptions


Last evening I watched T.Z.P. with M. M’s friends had already seen the film. They did not find it much good , I did. Were they wrong? I don’t know but I think I am not. T.Z.P. is very good.

I was reminded of the days when I was made to feel very low because I was not found as smart as the girls around were taken to be. But it also reminded me that I was never very unhappy for not being ‘this’ or ‘that’ much smart. I’d be sad only when I did not make my papa happy with my achievements or, under-achievements. Ishaan (Darsheel) in the movie is lucky to have a teacher telling him that it was not important to be a racing horse but to do what he loved most. Was I unlucky, then? In a way, yes, but,in many other ways, no. Lets come back to it later, first the film itself.

T.Z.P. is issue-based, problem-solving, a bit charisma-seeking, occasionally preachy, frequently imbalanced and yet profoundly touching. It has no great messages (thats one of the good things). It just reminds that there are always children who’d simply love and enjoy not doing the fruitful and the result-oriented. They might love to watch young birdies in their nest or the train of ants carrying food or a bee struggling out of water or the little kitten trying to climb the tree and falling every time or a rainbow in the little water supplies meandring in the backyard-garden. Ishaan doesn’t do most of these things, except the first one. I did all of them. But he does hundred other similar things. I should not forget though that there is also a BIG difference between two of us. He is a dyslexic kid. And one more difference, a BIGGER one: Ishaan paints what he likes. I drew and painted what would fetch appreciation of my papa=what was in the syllabus. In that sense, I am still a bit of my former self. Now, I either don’t paint or don’t know what to paint?

He doesn’t ‘want’ to paint, it comes from within as his only communication with the world. I have developed a thousand other silly ways of communicating with the world. I still ‘want’ to paint. I type ‘want’and the word starts playing…has it become a want?

But lets not be swayed by the heavy pathos or nostalgia of an unlived past. As I said earlier, T.Z.P. also reminded that I wasn’t very unhappy not being this/that smart; I wasn’t very unhappy not painting! Yes! Its in retrospect, after studying and competing for so long that I have started missing it ; after finding my thousand silly ways I have started missing one way that I didn’t tread.

But there was music too. More than painting and much closer. And there were animals! The lost dogs of my childhood - Sandy and Lucy, the rabbits, the parrots, and the paradise itself – ‘raj vihar’. My childhood was torn into two me-s, the papa-side me and the mumma-side me. Papa side - all very punctuated, and year long, round the clock, round the calendar, round the school sessions. mumma side – irregular, wild, and holidayish and,alas, brief. I grew on my papa-side and I un-grew on mumma-side. I learned at home/school and I unlearned at a ‘vihar’. But papa-side took over! Or did it really? I would be into one course and out of another. I’d quickly master a subject only to forget it happily and even quicker. I would have an ‘enviable’ score sheet which would make everybody, papa first and most of all, proud of me but not me; it would leave me more empty and dry inside. And again, lets not be swayed by this increasingly heavier pathos. I found thousand, ‘other’, ‘silly’ ways and I love(d) many of them! (I love teaching and I love being effective as a teacher. I am ready to learn, even study, more of this art.)

I ended up studying four languages, literature, computer programming, journalism and mass communication, interior decoration, foreign trade, economics and am also a proud management drop-out - my MBA lasted one month and a few happier days (it was like Ishaan’s boarding school, just that I was 20 then). Two masters, one bachelors (just one!), one diploma, four certificate courses and a presently pursuing doctoral (the tail of the devil, if hopefully it’s the tail finally). And I must say there were odd times when I enjoyed doing some of these things. And more than that, through all these, I intensified my love of all that I couldn’t or didn’t do. I am grateful to all my academics for mostly remaining the exact opposite of what I missed. Had it been equally or at least compensatorily exciting and luring, I’d have forgotten all that was behind.

But what now? Is all that lost forever? All my long years have surely made me more understanding of what I am made of or not made of. Or am I still not very sure? Maybe, may be not. What is sure is : I am definitely not what my profile says I am.