Taare Zameen Par

This is one of the most beautiful and sensitive movies made till date on children. It speaks a lot about the way the writer has taken the pains to understand what all goes on in the minds of a dyslexic child.

I was literally moved to tears on seeing the movie and must say that I donot remember a movie that has recently had such a forceful impact on me.

This movie shows the agony of a dyslexic(Slow learners fot the uninformed!) child who has difficulties in grasping the day to day activities of a normal school going kid. Simple activities like reading ,writing or maybe catching the ball that are done easily by any child seem to be an uphill task for this child. Parents, teacher and peers alike critize and ridicule him instead of giving him the much needed support. Its really heart rendering to look at the plight of the mother who is unable to do anything for the child and is evident from the silent tears that she sheds. The child is good at painting and lives in a world of its own with aliens and spaceships and imaginary things that converse with it.

The child has an elder brother who simply dotes on him. The elder brother is a rank holder and comes first in all activities, may it be sports or studies. Unhappy with the dismal performance of his younger child the father decides to send him to a hostel , as according to him hostel education will bring in him the required discipline and he may be more serious about his studies. What he does not realize infact due to ignorance is that the child may go into a shell and never be able to come out of it.

The father finally sends him off to a hostel in distant panchgani despite protests. The teachers are tired of the speed at which the child grasps things and start beating the child. The film has certain moments that literally speak volumes about the state of mind of the child. There is one instance where the child gives its mother a flashbook in which the child is standing along with his family and in subsequent photos is shown moving away and slowly vanishing from the picture.

A new lease of life comes when the art teacher who is on vacation is replaced for by a temporary art teacher(Aamir Khan) who has a different methodology of teaching kids with special abilities. He identifies the difficulty being faced by the child and tries to address it in a caring way.