Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself....
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their sould dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
These are lines from Khalil Gibran's "On Children". This was one of the few good things about Apna Asmaan. I went with very high hopes, and my mother. The former were mostly dashed, the latter dashingly liked the film, which again indicates that it was bad.
It started off pretty well, the story of a middle class couple trying to cope with their learning-disabled son. Gradually, the tensions and pretensions within the family started to be revealed, and I thought it was going to be a really good movie. But alas! Ah, well, read on.
Anupam Kher, a cosmic allopath, had just invented a brain booster, one injection of which could solve all mental problems. The father, in desperation, offered to try it on his son. Upon injecting the drug (pun, can it be?), the son's mouth started foaming, he dreamt of a dark graveyard with black-cloaked men holding staffs and fire-rimmed crosses (very reminiscent of the Ku Klax Klan), and then collapsed. The parents thought he was dead, but then, very weirdly, he got up panting, and he was just perfect. He was all of a sudden mentally grown up, his mind was working perfectly, and he was pretty much normal.
However, he was suffering from amnesia. The boy was told that Irfan Khan and Shobana, were indeed his parents, and he learnt to live with them. He started liking math, found a book by Shakuntala Devi, became a mathematical genius, started doing stage shows (where he answered any arithmetic question he was asked. Now, who would like to attend such a darned show?), became famous, streaked his hair, pierced his eyebrows, became some sort of a style icon, started going out with a hot actress/model.
However, he also started throwing tantrums at his parents, eventually disowning them. This was because the magical brain booster was actually a narcotic drug (Anupam Kher was some drug peddler on the run from law). The boy had become addicted, and used to visit a cemetery to smoke hash or ganja or whatever with another drug addict.
Now- this gets really funny- there was also an antidote to all this. The parents and the mother's counselor (who quotes the Khalil Gibran lines while lecturing the hapless parents, "Every one can't become a doctor or engineer or genius. Parents don't understand this. That's why we have so many suicides." At this point, my mother, very proud that her son is none of these, sits up and starts nodding) seeked and found Anupam Kher. He sent them on a treasure trail, at the end of which they found the antidote within a copy of the Bhagwad Gita.
There is some cliched analogy at this stage, with the Ramayana. The day they find the antidote is Dusserah, and the parents discuss how they need to kill their "new" genius son to reclaim their "old", mentally-different son.
The son returned home to ask for his money (which is quite a lot by now). The parents wanted to inject him with the antidote. A scuffle resulted, in which the syringe pierced his neck. He collapsed, and upon his recovery, he was back to his stuttering, childish old self.
Yes, the music is good, the message, that unbridled power and intelligence can be destructive, and that it is more important to be nice than to be a genius, is also very good, but the way it is delivered is ludicrous. Also, at one point, when the movie starts appearing really sweet, an implicit advertisement of Nerolac Paints props up. WHY????? It just spoils the entire mood!
The acting is really commendable, though. And I think the way the movie ends is absolutely superb. It is just that it goes wrong on the way.
As for the title, I think Apna Aasman can be taken to mean "To each his own." Everyone has their own dream. It doesn't matter how one does compared to others; what must matter is were we able to reach our own sky. I'll end with that thought- I found the movie really good in parts, the whole package was just stupid, but then you might just like it. As we know, to each his own.
