Taare Zameen Par

"Taare Zameen Par" begins with the world seen through the eyes of a young boy. The problems that the boy has in school and consequently at home result from a misunderstanding which resembles a hungry monster that keeps feeding on more and bigger obstacles and growing. When the young hero Ishaan claims that letters are dancing which is why he cannot read the words, the teacher mistakes that for a bad attitude and reacts with anger. So do the parents at home, especially the father who wants to prepare his son for the rat race in the big bad adult world. When problems reach the critical mass level, the parents decide to send Ishaan to a boarding school to "straighten him up". This move to the boarding school is another huge morsel for the already big and scary monster. But things get scarier and gloomier as the separation from family is a traumatic event in Ishaan's misunderstood world. Things go from bad to worse until a substitute art teacher enters or rather storms into the lives of the young boys. Nothing is the same from that point on. The monster turns out not to be that scary after all and it has a name – dyslexia. It is just like when a child's imagination runs wild and sees "monsters" in a dark room at night, but when the light is switched on those scary creatures are nothing more than toys and other familiar objects scattered around. Nikumbh Sir does exactly that: he switches on the light in the minds of the children including Ishaan and illuminates all the beauty, creativity and potential that they have. At one point Nikumbh makes a remark to a fellow teacher that we humans are "away from inner beauty". The teacher's sensitivity, wisdom, attentive and caring attitude brings out not only that inner beauty, but also through individual dedicated work with Ishaan he succeeds in taming the monster of dyslexia. But there is more: Nikumbh Sir manages to convince the teachers at the boarding school as well as Ishaan's parents that there is another way than just stiff and sometimes crippling rules. There is another way than preparing for the rat race. After all, the world is full of other ways.

Darsheel Safary delivers an absolutely stellar performance as Ishaan. We feel his emotions, we see his world. The animation that appears in parts of the movie serves as an insightful depiction of how a dyslexic child sees things, how misunderstood "dancing" letters turn into scary looking spiders. He is definitely a phenomenal actor in the making.

Aamir Khan deserves to be put on the pedestal for his genuine greatness as an actor, director, producer, as a human being. He deserves all the laurels for the courage to take on a social issue like dyslexia and raise awareness about it, for promoting an understanding of this problem, for making a statement about the education system, about parenting and for taking us viewers on a magical journey back to childhood. All this is done in a non-castigating, colorful and caring manner that makes "Taare Zameen Par" a delight to the eyes and to the soul. The greatness of the star is visible in this magnificent film through his work and not in the number of frames in which he appeared. This release is particularly refreshing as in recent time there has been more than enough mass mediocrity sold to the audience as entertainment. "Taare Zameen Par" is an illustrious example of how a film can be entertaining, with profound messages and filled with emotions. As a viewer and fan of movies I would like to see more, much more from Aamir Khan Productions.

John Grisham's "TheTestament" - Defining the Missionary Within

I just finished reading "The Testament" by John Grisham.You can find literature in the unlikeliest of places and I have come to believe is not only a work of literature that is if you use my definition of the words which is to describe all work that edifies as literature. Nobility is found in this book of Grisham in the person of the principal character of the story Rachel Lane and her acceptance and trust in Nate O’Riley, a chronic alcoholic who has been through rehabilitation at least four times and is forever living on the edge of a cliff.
In the book, Rachel Lane is a missionary living among remote Indian tribes in Brazil’s and also an illegitimate daughter of a philandering billionaire who has willed her most of hi fortune. But Rachel living in primitive conditions in the Brazilian Rain Forest has no interest in the money and is totally to the initiatives of Nate O’Riley the lawyer, who needs her signature to have the Will executed.
Surrounded as Nate and his law firm is by the other legitimate half siblings of Rachel who live in a world where money and the good things of life is everything, Rachel’s life style and disdain for the billions that she has inherited come through as surreal to the lawyer who has made his own money buy suing doctors for unethical malpractice and by making numerous trade offs in his personal ethics on that route. In a man like him, who himself was hard put to find any thing good in his own life, Rachel was the first person in decades to see some thing good in him, and then going on to walk her talk, she put her trust in him and his intents that he would not betray her trust.
To me the story in John Grisham’s The Testamant is not about Rachel and Nate and chasing wills or even the beautifully described topography of the Pantanal region of the Brazilian Rain Forest, it is about the conclusions drawn and the statements made about never losing hope in the hidden goodness of man and because of that goodness, there is the ability to trust, to take risks as you trust. Finally of course, without getting unduly preachy Near the book’s end, Rachel Lane the missionary dies of malaria and is buried by the Indians among whom she lived and died and who the worldly wise lawyer Nate O’Riley describes as the bravest person he had ever met because she had absolutely no fear of death because she walked daily with the one who had conquered it in the resurrection.
There is no romance in this book, no sleaze, no sex. But reverberating through when the book finally ends is the fragrant underlining of the fact that good lies in every life however darkened by smoke and soot it might have become. That if you go searching for it, sooner or rather often later, you find it and the beauty in each human soul can be chiseled out if only one would make the effort and have the persistence to go on and on. And that effort is the one that converts a man into a missionary.