Maa

(Follow up to Taare Zameen Par)

The rawest of my emotions that I can still recall at short notice is the sense of desolation I felt as a 9 year old when my parents left me at my grandparents' for summer vacation. A lump formed in my throat when I did some sort of a goodbye ritual to the people I took for granted - parents and a toddler of a little sister. The feeling compounded when my grandparents too had to go out of town for some wedding or the other. Secretly, I blamed my parents for not insisting that I come with them.

The days were actually okay - there was lots to do - play, play and play to heart's content. It was the evenings that made my tear glands work out a little. Beloved uncles and aunts were of no consolation - I needed the comfort zone of my mother and familiar scenes around the house. I vaguely remember feeling a little better with the return of the grandparents but the dull ache returned with alarming regularity every evening around dusk time. Even a month of this did not make me immune.

The salad days of late teens, college, self-absorbed days in the outside world with my own money, the wide wide world with many distractions, new indulgences, all consuming jobs, adulthood, new country, new people, my own family, new responsibilities all led to a rugged hide. Or so I thought until I heard the strands of the song 'Maa' in 'Taare Zameen Par'. Wonderfully conceived, this song is the soul of the movie, in my opinion. The parents leave the troublesome child in a boarding school to discipline him. It catches the vulnerability of the child and the desolation he feels when plucked out of a comfort zone. It reminded me that I still possessed those tear glands.

Bhej na itna dhoor mujhko tu...

Yaad bhi thujko aa na paaon ma

Kya itna bhura hoon main ma?

One more reason why I connected with TZP.