A little sweet, a little sour
A little close, not too far,
All I need, all I need, all I need is to be free….
Let me in without a shout,
Let me in, I have a doubt,
There are more, many more, many many many more like me…

…sings eleven-year-old Dhruv, with a generosity of gestures that only free spirits possess. His hands flutter in abandon and his eyes, alight in joy, insist on attention. When he fumbles with the words, he glances at the man with a straggly beard sitting in a corner and picks up the thread again. That man is 'A-Mole Frog', 45-year-old friend to the bunch of 15-odd pre-teens in a classroom in Mumbai's Tulip School and the writer of the song. To an industry bloated on a diet of razzmatazz formulae, he is also Amole Gupte, scriptwriter and creative director of a film of rare honesty, Taare Zameen Par.

Gupte and wife Deepa Bhatia, the researcher and editor of the film, have been coming to Tulip, a school for autistic, blind and physically-challenged children, for six years now-since they began researching the story. This, of course, is a happy classroom. The children don't sit quietly at their desks. They move around at will as Gupte makes faces, lets out animal sounds to grab a straying eye and encourages all to join in the fun and songs. Suddenly, he has disappeared behind a crowd of children-one is on his lap, another hangs by his shoulder, a third is tugging at his side while a fourth is atop the table in front of him. “It's always an amazing sight when Amole is here, with the kids tugging, hugging and falling all over him. They don't easily let go of themselves with people, but with Amole they have struck a bond,â€' says the school's founder Medha Lotlikar.

Gupte is calm, smiling at every little tug at his matted locks-almost like a desi Santa in T-shirt-and trying to teach them to sing Hum honge kaamyaab. It's another thing that they would rather have Frog (a nickname Gupte likes because it makes the children think of him as a tiny being they don't have to be intimidated by) chant the Bum bum bole song that Aamir Khan breaks into in the film. As laughter fills the room, you spot in Gupte the teacher that Aamir Khan played in the film, Ram Shankar Nikumbh. You spot the real behind the reel.

“I am an artist, a story-teller, a theatre person and I bring those skills to my interaction with children,â€' says the filmmaker, who has been conducting art workshops for children for almost a decade now. Today, the sessions are held at institutes helped by the Maharashtra Dyslexia Association and other Mumbai-based schools like the Besant Montessori School, Juhu, or Ashima, a municipal school in Bandra. A few minutes into our conversation and Gupte says firmly, “Nothing can be impersonal in life.â€' Taare Zameen Par, one of the finest mainstream films about a child's world, certainly is not.

Aamir's character was inspired by his art teacher Ramdas Sampat Nikumbh. And like Ishaan Awasthi, the free spirit battered by pushy parents and a blind education system, Gupte loved to paint. He went through the grind of interschool contests and art schools, always the winner. “As a kid, once you start winning, you are doomed to repeat that success,â€' he says. “Like Ishaan always was the last kid to reach the competition venue,â€' he says. Like Ishaan, he once bunked school and had his neighbour sign an absent note after convincing her that his mother was illiterate.

Unlike his creation, Gupte, an Andheri lad, was a brilliant student in school though his marks took a tumble in Mumbai's Narsee Monjee college when he found the highs of the stage. He worked with “the late Mahendra Joshi, the enfant terrible of Bombay theatre and other greats like Feroz Khan and Paresh Rawalâ€'. In 1981, he was invited to act in FTII's cult diploma film Chakkar Chandu Ka Chameli Wala and he stayed on for eight years. “Acting was like getting into a tunnel I didn't want to get out of. I perhaps spent double the time a normal student spends at the FTII, without being one.â€' Not surprisingly, his parents were not amused.

In 1995, Sanjana Kapoor invited him for a solo show of his paintings at the Prithvi Art Gallery. He held another show in 1998. The gallery packed up in 1999 and joining the art mart didn't appeal to Gupte. He was already a prolific writer-technician in the TV industry, having assisted directors like Kundan Shah and Saeed Mirza and hosted one of the first talk shows on satellite TV, Bindaas Bol (Sony, 1999). But he decided to share his gift with children through the workshops. “I had something to offer that could connect with children and it was for free. So there was no dearth of takers,â€' he says.

He livened up classes with theatre (now that explains Aamir's boisterous entry in the film in a clown's costume) and spontaneity. “I am not a teacher. I am just a friend of children…â€' It was also a friend's concern that got him into scripting the film. “If a kid is hyperactive at home because of a decline in playing spaces outside in our urban areas, it's not a problem. Animals accept their offspring as they are. A tribal father in a jungle will accept the way his kid is; he isn't bothered about his kid's pace of climbing a tree, but we always seem to be judging. Even in an art workshop, parents say, 'Why is your tree not perfect?' 'Why are the walls of your house not straight like the others? …' It's a pity that we have stopped finding the beauty in the ordinary. Now we have no allowance for deviance,â€' he says. Some of the anger has given way to hope after the film's release. “Now I meet more and more teachers who think and sound like Nikumbh. The reactions, especially of fathers, surprised me. That people are coming out of the theatres with wet handkerchiefs shows that the heart of the nation is in place. The success of the film strengthens that hope.â€'

When the couple first came to the Tulip School in 2002, Taare Zameen Par was still called and registered as High Jump, which was later changed lest the audience mistook it for a sports film. “Amole and I had been working on a film script about children with learning difficulties since 1998. We had already met several teachers, special educators, parents and children but the picture in our minds wasn't clear when a common friend suggested that we come here,â€' says Deepa.

The experiences that they carried back wove itself into the story that today has many parents and teachers thinking again. “In the beginning we had imagined that the time we were spending with the children was the means to an end -our script. The equation has changed radically,â€' says Deepa. It's a commitment that impressed producer-director Aamir Khan. In the promo-book of the film, he says, “Having spent almost seven years in close contact with children, Amole had a story to tell-a story that he nurtured for over two years, and was born out of his close association with children and what I see as his love of childhood.â€'

That love shines through in the movie, even in its sometimes didactic dialogue. “The film asks parents not to judge. Its wandering eye also catches kids in all age groups and situations -from an infant to the tea boy. It captures the complete range in a classroom, with its mix of the errant, the attentive and the snobbish. Ishaan's story is just a bridge to childhood,â€' says Gupte for whom making the film was also a personal challenge to rise to standards set by masters like Ghatak, Damle and Fatehlal.

Gupte, who had acted in one of Aamir Khan's directions in college, had wanted to cast Akshaye Khanna in Nikhumb's role and asked his college junior, Khan, for help. “We had to have a mainstream star to attract the audience.â€' Khanna was unavailable and Khan showed an interest. “He wept profusely in the first narration. I could see him reacting to the story not like a star, but like a parent and an individual; he had the vision to understand the script and that was half the job done,â€' recalls Gupte.

Darsheel Safary's selection as Ishaan wasn't through any screen test “because an audition is again a platformof competition,â€' says Gupte. Instead, he waited. “I found Darsheel in one of Shiamak Davar's classes,â€' he says as Deepa adds, “It was sheer instinct. He's almost like a little man.â€'What about the tiff between Gupte and Khan during the film's shooting? Says Deepa, “If Aamir is the father, we are the mother of the baby and the pride in our baby is mutual and bigger than occasional stumbles.â€'

Gupte and Deepa are already working on their next project which will see them debut as production partners with a corporate production house. “While Taare… was more about urban issues and problems of the urban kid, our next film India Item will be on the urban-rural divide, the inequality seen through a child's eyes,â€' says Deepa.

And what kind of parents are these friend teachers? Tagore once said, says Gupte, that it is the time when a child is dreaming that he is at his best. Gupte and Bhatia let their seven year- old son Partho dream. “Once when Partho was drawing a weird-looking pink crocodile, Amole stopped me from correcting him. Let him draw the world in the way he wishes to see it,â€' says Deepa.

Screen India