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,” says the school’s founder Medha Lotlikar.

... contd.