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.” Khanna was unavailable and Khan showed an interest. “He wept and wept at 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,” recalls Gupte.

Darsheel Safary’s selection as Ishaan wasn’t through any screen test “because an audition is again a platform of competition,” says Gupta. Instead, he waited. “I found Darsheel in one of Shiamak Davar’s classes,” he says as Deepa adds, “It was sheer instinct. He’s almost like a little man.” 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.”

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,” 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,” says Deepa.
Amen. Let the free spirits be.