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 bhole 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 theatreperson and I bring those skills to my interaction with children,” 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.” 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,” he says. “Like Ishaan, always was the last kid to reach the competition venue,” he says. Like Ishaan, he once bunked school and had his neighbour sign an absent note after convincing her that his mother was illiterate.

... contd.