It’s a sand band baaja of sorts. Out there in the Rajasthan desertscape, an adolescent kid, tourists and itinerant minstrels kick off an impromptu music concert. The beat’s magic, the snappy kid’s deliriously happy. It’s short-lived. On being treated unjustly, the same kid breaks into a solo concert to release his pent-up anger. And there’s no one to watch him but an ailing camel silhouetted against a slate-grey moonlight.
That tiny tandav has that wow effect, drawing you close to the little big hero of director Nila Madhab Panda’s I am Kalam. Although crafted with rudimentary technique and clueless about when to cut away from a prolonged scene, this ode to an underprivileged child’s struggle for self-education is a little jewel. Obviously shot on a shoestring budget, the outcome’s purposeful and absorbingly narrated.
It is the kind of enterprise which the Children’s Film Society of India (CFSI) should be producing and releasing theatrically on an ongoing basis. Sadly, does anyone even know of the existence of films like CFSI’s Heda Huda and Harun Arun? These have won an armful of prestigious international awards, but continue to be stored in the government-funded CFSI’s godowns.
Of late, fortuitously kid-friendly movies are being made independently — like Stanley ka Dabba and Chillar Party — and finding wide exposure too. The sufficiently publicised and fairly well-marketed I am Kalam is one more welcome attempt to speak out on behalf of children, the ignored minority at the movies.
Its theme is its calling card, although unwittingly or knowingly it is resonant of the Raj Kapoor-produced Ab Dilli Dur Nahin (1957) written by the eminent progressive writers Rajinder Singh Bedi and Mahafiz Hyder. Way back then, a village kid trekked to New Delhi to seek justice from Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. In fact, another movie moppet sought to appeal, also, to the highest authorities in the land in Naunihal.
Here, Chhotu who renames himself Kalam, after sighting the then Prez on TV, reposes faith in the ruling authority. He has to since his life’s going asunder, despite his few supportive friends: the lonely next-door-royalty prince, an Indophile mademoiselle. And occasionally the proprietor of the dhaba where the boy brews tea, cleans the bartans, you know the drift.
On the opposition side, find Kalam Jr’s dhaba co-worker who apes Irfaan Khan but claims he’s imitating Amitabh Bachchan. Haiiiiinh? Also in the grouchy party, are the prince’s shatranj-playing father (he tells his son, “Only play with boys of royal blood”, huh?), not to forget the dagger-eyed receptionist of the haveli-turned hotel. Thanks to the convenience-strewn script, when the going gets unbereably tough, our Kalam Boy hops on to a Delhi-bound truck. Cluck.
So okay, the script is much too simplistic and naïve. Some of the actors are insufficiently directed, like the benign maharani striking showroom dummy poses. If you’re willing to ignore that and technical lapses, it’s because of the use of authentic locations, the paring down of melodrama, and most of all, a two-thumbs up performance by Harsh Mayar as the boy who would be literate. Deservedly, he was adjudged the Best Child Actor at the National Awards this year. He is particularly appealing in close-ups, his eyes radiating optimism.
His princely pal, enacted by Husaan Saad, is impressive too. Gulshan Grover, as the lovelorn dhaba owner, and Beatrice Ordeix as his French éclair of desire, are likeable.
Anyone whose heart goes out to the urgent need for child literacy in the nation’s interior lands, should catch Kalam Jr asap.