Thursday, May 9, 2013

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS III


          A CHILD’S INNOCENCE – INSPIRED BY AN INDIAN MOVIE

Even though India is said to be a third world country, they hardly effectively present as such. Sometimes I’m tempted to think there is a problem with our black skin, or the color black. Black is no doubt a beautiful color but its associations have turned out unpleasant. Black is associated with every form of darkness, both spiritual and physical. Black is associated with corruption, violence, underdevelopment, disease, poverty and worst of all, the Nigerian police. But you still cannot remove the fact that black remains beautiful, and I’m proud to be black.
India constantly strives to prove the world wrong as regards associating them with underdevelopment and they have built sustainable world class industries to that effect. Their developmental strides have permeated every sector of their economy up to their movie industry, Bollywood. I still do not understand the concept behind the popular movie industries around the world trying to fashion their names around the all powerful Hollywood. Aside that, though, we sure cannot but give them their due honor. Bollywood is one solid industry that has distinguished itself churning out movies you can hardly attribute to any other movie industry. From just sounding tiring melodious tones in their movies, in recent times we have seen very inspiring stories that have moved us to tears. This one is no exception.
Children are always beautiful. They are physically beautiful, beautiful to behold, beautiful in their grips, innocence, and in their imagination. It is difficult to phantom why anyone will hurt a child. In fact I also developed a theory around children. I know a friend who tells me he hates to hear a child cry around him. Yes it’s not so pleasant, but what else do children do but play and cry. So I thought that anyone who hates children is most likely not a good person and should not be dealt with. That has turned out not to be too far from the truth. It’s the innocence of a child that brings out the cheerfulness in you, and allows its transmission to others in your dealings with them.
The movie, Like stars on earth, was centered around a beautiful child, his obsessions with play and blatant disregard for anything academic, but yet his expression of his beautiful disregarded talent. Certainly he was misunderstood by 99% of those around him including me, no thanks to our rigid stereotypic nature. In fact at a point I was pissed at the child’s attitude until I saw the products of his mind. I then realized this was no ordinary child. He had a beautiful mind, he was creative at his level, and he cherished and tended to nurture the beautiful products of nature.
He had a small fishing net he created which he would use to catch tiny fishes from a pond and put in a small make shift aquarium he created at home, he would beg his father to take him to see an aquarium which of course he would decline. He made very beautiful paintings and drawings which no one appreciated. His mother loved him only as her child because he persistently failed at every other regular activity she and her husband deemed normal. The other love he got was from his elder brother and his two dogs. His father disliked him for failing woefully at school and easily getting into trouble. Once, he was to throw a cricket ball back to kids playing around, and he mistakenly threw it away from their direction and into another compound. This resulted in a fight between him and one of the kids for which he was punished at home, and many other situations as such. He was just different, in a way no one understood. Society had labeled every other form of expressed activity but not this one. He repeated common third grade twice, and had to leave the school. This straw broke the camel’s back, and his parents sent him away from home to a boarding school as punishment. The poor child was literarily alone in this cruel cold world. There he was so punished in his new school over the same issues that he got scared of his shadow and considered committing suicide at different times. One cannot but wonder why a tender 8year old child will go through such horror. How exactly is he supposed to perceive the world from that age?
His torments continued till this new fine arts teacher, Ram, got temporary employment with the school. His introductory class was so theatrical the other kids immediately fell in love with him, but Ishaan the distraught kid, remained so cold and detached from the world around him. He soon caught Ram’s eye when he didn’t do a class work he gave the kids where they were to put up any imagination into shapes on paper by drawing or painting. The arts teacher soon felt so unfulfilled because of this one child, a classic depiction of the bible tale of the one lost sheep. Ram sought to break into this child’s mind to no avail. The good teacher then went to the boy’s home to seek solution after going through his school work to notice a striking pattern. At home the boy’s father lamented his son’s perceived inadequacies both at home and school. The teacher was uninterested and just focused on putting the patterns together.  Coincidentally he had worked with children with special needs and himself wasn’t a ‘perfect’ child, so he could easily identify the pattern and make sense of it. The poor boy easily got confused when he heard lengthy instructions. He saw mirror images of words and interpreted and wrote as such and so literarily couldn’t read and write, he had no grasp of fine movements and so couldn’t tie a shoe lace, throw a ball straight or perform normal fine movements. But he possessed a beautiful uncommon talent and excelled perfectly at creating beautiful things, from building to drawing to painting. Those were his art. “But those were not the things the child needed to succeed in this world”, the father lamented, in his parochial view, like many of us and our parents. Ishaan had an uncommon condition called Dyslexia.
Dyslexia is a brain condition characterized by an inability to easily read or write, put in a simple way, or perform learned activities generally, but by the ability to reach into the inner recesses of the mind to create what is not. Obviously not so serious. It is a condition characterized by exquisite effortless imaginative tendencies (sadly we are not used to having such talent around and even work to kill it), the type that has created software codes like for Microsoft, designs like Apple products, art pieces, architectural masterpieces, and name any beautiful thing you can think of. Ishaan had this ability, how can such child possibly be sick? It is said to be the result of a brain wiring problem, which I do not totally agree with, because just as we have various abilities, they do too. And it does not lead to self infliction of injury so why tag it entirely an abnormality? Well, thanks to the new world we now live in that has placed a premium on innate abilities, maybe a lot of creations would have ended in the grave, and life would be boring just eating, sleeping, farming, falling in and out of love, and gisting about relationships. No wondering how your neighbor achieved something in a different way. Ishaan’s father quarreled with Ram for suggesting the child was sick but later came back to his senses. Dyslexia is even a gift and you will see the reason below. Alas with Ram’s new discovery, Ishaan was the better for it, and he shone like the little star he was.
Aside the movie, it is still common place to find ‘normal’ gifted kids who aren’t given the opportunity to efficiently express themselves, starting right from home, to school, to the society at large. They are looked down upon when they try to express themselves in a way that’s different from society’s norm. This is the result of a stern rigid approach to life and this effectively takes the society a step backward from the benefit of such expression. Sir Ken Robinson also tried to imply this in his TED talk where he suggested schools kill creativity. In my assessment, the adult’s mind has been shaped after going through various encounters with life. To be able to think outside the box to create new things one has to recreate a childlike perception of a problem to enable a flexible mindset. The adult mindset then gives form and shape to the new creation.
Below is a short list of incredibly successful people who were dyslexic – the reason it is a gift, and maybe a reason not to force a child to go to a formal or regular school:
Actors & Entertainers:

Artists, Designers, & Architects:

Athletes:

Entrepreneurs & Business Leaders:

Filmmakers:

Political Leaders:

Physicians & Surgeons

Inventors & Scientists:


Going by this list would you not just want to choose to be dyslexic so you can concentrate on developing your talent from childhood? Well, many others who were not dyslexic did great stuff too. Just try and act, that is the bottom line - action.
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