Tahaan - A Lyrical Ballad

Tourists shriek with childlike delight as they cage the pristine beauty of the hanging icicles from a decrepit tree-branch in their cameras. One of them gets deeply amused with a certain icicle shaped like a machine-gun; probably a visual such as this sets just the mood for the required striking contrasts of a microcosm of the macrocosmic ethos of life in an insurgency, against the canvas called Kashmir.
Santosh Sivan’s Tahaan is one such beautiful joy-ride down a child’s psyche and his perception of the world around him that rotates on the give-and-take policy.
With the death of his doting grandfather (Victor Banerjee), the reins of Tahaan’s (Purav Bhandare) family passes on to his mother(Sarika), a woman who has not seen her husband for five years. To make two ends meet, she resorts to sell off family valuables and the domestic donkey Birbal, Tahaan’s best friend. What follows is a bittersweet tale of Tahaan embarking on a journey of growing up in a bid to bring back his beloved companion.
Truffaut did it in 400 Blows, Ray did it in Pather Panchali and Vishal Bhardwaj did it in The Blue Umbrella (just to name a few) but Santosh Sivan went an extra mile (or two) to map the sinusoidal trials and tribulations of childhood going on to adolescence. Purav Bhandare is brilliant as the quintessential, rebellious Tahaan and his natural innocence makes him so loveable (a thing that has been missing in child actors in recent times, read Cheeni Kum and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai). Sarika as the poverty striken mute witness of despair scores with flying colours with her impeccable and mature body language and emoting, that very aptly reeks of the dignified sobriety that has been thrust upon her due to prolonged suffering. Victor Banerjee as the man who refuses to believe in the possibility that his son may have been gunned down in the insurgency and shall never return and who has to shoulder all responsibilities of the family on his decaying arms is phenomenal and Anupam Kher is a revelation as the brutally practical vendor of goods. Sana Sheikh as Tahaan’s talkative sister and Ankush Dubey as the young Jihadi whom Tahaan “befriends” in the course of his journey are equally refreshing. But full marks to Rahul Bose; who could’ve ever imagined him in a role of a nincompoop stable-boy which he portrays with great élan. Rahul Khanna does justice in his bit-role.
The picturesque Kashmir is shot beautifully, be it when the frozen river melting, or when the camera beautifully pans the vast landscape in which we discover the little Tahaan, connoting the insignificance of his innocence in the big, bad world. The cleverly scripted Tahaan is punctuated by a decent background score by Taufique Qureshi. As for the moments…..well….there are so many! The way Tahaan asserts to his sister, “Yeh tum auraton ki bas ki baat nahin, yeh toh hum mardon ka kaam hain” is too cute, or when Rahul Bose explains “Hum agar hazaar race bhi jeet jaye ,toh bhi hum logon ke naseeb mein ek gadha bhi nahin likha hain” and then the way he adoringly looks at his goggles and hesitates a bit to gift it to Tahaan, contribute to Santosh Sivan’s lyrical ballad called Tahaan. The denouement where Tahaan’s friend conveys his grandfather’s words-miracles happen, and the snowfall starts as soon as the realization starts, is much more beautiful than a similar scene in Black.
The tranquil valley, reverberating with the constant shelling and army beats sets the perfect foil which paradise on earth witnesses everyday, the affection with which both the militants and the separatists handle Tahaan’s inquisitiveness rather asserts the fact that irrespective of what one is , one’s heart melts in front of something so innocent and beautiful. Santosh Sivan strikes the right chord with this film, one wonders why such a palpable insight into Kashmir was missing in films dealing with the same issues.
Take a break from the daily farce, stop by and behold, oh! onlooker.