Your tears are the target: Why Sitare Zameen Par isn't a movie, it's a war cry

The first time I met Malini Chib, I was apprehensive. She 'walked' in an electric wheelchair, and 'talked' by pressing the keyboard of a small typing instrument with 'one little finger'. Cerebral Palsy did that to her. How was I to talk to 'such people'? I took a deep breath, pointed to her wheelchair, bent down to her level, and said: "Too bad an excellent career is out of the question for you." As she looked puzzlingly, I added, "Stand-up comedy." Wait, what? Why did I say that? Would she be offended? Am I being insensitive? A million questions ran ultramarathons inside my head.

And then Malini laughed. A staccato of "he-he-he-he", crisp and breathless, like hiccups of joy tumbling over each other, head falling back as if the moment had possessed her. Then: silence; not because it was over, but because the next wave was charging up, too big to stay contained as a rip-roaring laughter erupted from somewhere deep inside her gut, a full-body surrender to delight. Yes, she was drooling, and coughed between laughs – side effects of her condition, but she didn't care and neither did I, as I couldn't help laugh at how bad a joke I had cracked.

That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship filled with everything from laughter, tears, fights, to angry outbursts filled with 'f-bombs' hurled at each other. You know: a typical dosti. 15 years later, I can understand her even on the phone (a side effect of spending too much time with her infectious presence). And along the way, I have made many other 'disabled' friends thanks to Malini's organization ADAPT – Able Disabled All People Together: Nilesh Singit (a hard talker who doesn't mince words), Farhan Contractor, Zenia Malegamwala (one of the most vivacious dancers I know), Utpal Shah (a great accountant)... to name a few.

Hence, when the darkness of the theatre swallowed me up, and Aamir Khan flickered to life on the big screen, I was apprehensive — have director RS Prasanna and Aamir done a good job? But instead of Aamir Khan, the superstar, the safe harbour of familiar entertainment, Sitare Zameen Par throws you headfirst into an abyss you didn't know lived inside. This isn't a film about disability. It's a surgical incision into the collective soul of a society that worships 'normal’'while bleeding out its own humanity.

I watched Gulshan Arora, Aamir Khan's arrogant, height-obsessed basketball coach, sneer at his new team of "neurodivergent misfits," and a cold recognition seized me. That sneer? I had worn it. That impatience? I have lived it. That bone-deep discomfort around difference and disability ("Yeh kya baat hui...pagal ko pagal mat bolo")? It's the scaffolding I had built my life around before I met Malini. As Gulshan barked orders at the ten luminous souls the world calls disabled, the real horror dawned on me: We—you and I—are the monsters in this story, the real villains, just like Gulshan.

The sugar coating for a bitter pill: Let's be brutally honest. Aamir Khan is the glittering lure, the brand name that gets our privileged tashreef aka derriere into seats. The film weaponises his stardom against our complacency. His Gulshan isn't acting—he's holding up a funhouse mirror to our collective apathy.

Remember the flicker of discomfort you felt when you saw a man with Down Syndrome struggling to order coffee while the barista looked past him? That's Gulshan. Recall the internal sigh when an elderly woman with a walker slowed your hurried pace on the pavement? That’s Gulshan.

His journey from dismissive coach to humbled human isn't a character arc; it's an intervention staged in Dolby surround sound. As he stumbles, fails, and finally sees these ten individuals—not as diagnoses of their condition, but as Satbir with his fierce loyalty, Guddu conquering his terror of water, Golu radiating infectious joy, Lotus navigating the world with quiet grace—the cracking sound isn't just in the theatre speakers. It's the brittle shell around your own heart fracturing.

A moment captures this transformation with devastating simplicity. Gulshan, defeated and raw, says: "Jinka dil itna bada ho, unmein koi kami kaise ho sakti hai." The line hangs in the air, a verdict on our own transactional lives.

The real constellations: Forget Khan. The film's beating, radiant heart lies in its ten debut stars—Aroush Datta, Gopi Krishna Varma, Samvit Desai, Vedant Sharma, Ayush Bhansali, Ashish Pendse, Rishi Shahani, Rishabh Jain, Naman Mishra, Simran Mangeshkar. These aren't actors playing disability; they are artists sharing fragments of their lived realities with a rawness that scalds the soul.

When Guddu (Gopi Krishna Varma) finally overcomes his paralysing fear of bathing, the triumph isn't scored with soaring violins but with the quiet, earth-shattering power of a human being claiming agency over his own body. When Golu (Simran Mangeshkar) dances with abandon, her joy isn't performative; it’s a supernova erupting in the stifling darkness of a world obsessed with "normal".

As one audience member, the brother of a special needs man, wrote in an emotional letter to Aamir Khan Productions: "My elder brother, who is specially-abled, just kept staring at the now blank screen, silent tears quietly streaming down his face. And then he turned to me and whispered the words that will stay with me for the rest of my life: 'Yeh bilkul hum jaise hai na?'"

And that's just one letter. Let me tell you, Aamir, RS Prasanna and Aparna Purohit (producer), tens of millions of others—the Malini's, Nilesh, Farhan, Zenia and Utpal's of the world, I know, would be saying the same thing.

The uncomfortable arithmetic of our shared brokenness: We cling to the myth of able-bodied invincibility, of the 'normal'. But let me ask you: when you were born, were you normal? You were a bumbling idiot and had to be taken care of by your parents for years. So was I. So was my father, in the last two years of his life before he passed away. He wasn't normal, like I wasn't when I was born, yet the world didn't point fingers at us. Why do we point it at 'them'?

Then, there are cold, hard numbers. According to World Health Organisation (WHO) figures from 2011, about 15% people in the world are disabled. That's around 1 billion people, a number that's increasing due to population growth, the rise of chronic diseases, and improvements in measurement metrics. And 15% of India is approximately 222 million Indians. Now, consider the families and friends of these 15%, the parents and siblings of all the disabled people, allies like Kartar Paaji (Gurpal Singh) in the film offering unwavering support, and the total population touched by disability swells to over 50%.

Now add into this the infant who can't speak, the elders who forget or need help walking, the chronically ill, even me who has myopia, and you'll realise that over 90% of us are navigating some form of disability right now. So, in this actual normal, where is the place of the mythical 'normal' the world keeps harping about?

Disability, as you can hopefully see, isn't a tragic exception; it is the baseline condition of being human. We enter this world utterly dependent, wailing for care. If we live long enough, we exit it frail, often needing that same care again. The years in between? We're just temporarily able-bodied, constructing elaborate fortresses of competence to hide our inherent vulnerability.

The film's quiet genius lies in showing how those we label "disabled" expose this truth daily. They master courage without masks, navigate a world not built for them with relentless resilience, and offer radical tenderness in a world shimmering with cynicism. Their light persists, despite our attempts to curtain it.

The architects we erased: Malini, Mithu, Sathi—giants among us: Now, I'd like to call to attention the character who's the actual 'hero' in the film. No, it's not Gulshan or the kids. To me, it is equally, perhaps more so—the character of Kartar Paaji, the ally of the disabled. When the world refused to care, he lent his hand and his understanding, bringing, as he does in the film, Gulshan, to understand the truth that there is no normal.

I have been fortunate enough to know many dozen such Kartar Paaji's in my life. Take Malini's parents, Dr Mithu Alur who started Spastic Society of India in 1971 (which became ADAPT in the new millennium). Or Sathi Alur who married her later and became more than her own father ever became to Malini and helped the Spastic Society to become a national movement in the next two decades, then a global one—at least spanning the global south, in the last two.

They, and the thousands of people who joined them in the preceding decades, didn't just start schools; they declared war on a nation's indifference, brick by painful brick. Sathi Alur, the self-effacing strategist, built systems where none existed.

They fought for inclusion when "disability" was a whispered shame. Their pioneering work birthed the very awareness this film commodifies. Yet, how many people walking into multiplexes this weekend know their names? We celebrate the glittering surface, ignoring the bedrock. This film exists because people like Malini and Nilesh refused to let cerebral palsy silence their voice. It exists because millions of parents turned their living rooms into war rooms for dignity.

The bitter pill coated in political sugar: Even the film's journey to our screens reveals our national discomfort with raw truth. The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) delayed its release, demanding five edits. The most jarring? A mandated quote from the Prime Minister is plastered in the opening frames. Nothing wrong with that, except one word in it 'divyang' (divinely-abled).

It rings hollow for many disability rights activists because it's a saccharine euphemism that airbrushes the daily struggles, systemic barriers, and raw grit required to navigate an inaccessible India. It turns lived reality into feel-good inspiration. Forcing this quote onto the film feels like a desperate attempt to reframe an uncomfortable societal mirror.

True inclusion doesn't need governmental disclaimers; it needs staircases turned to ramps, inclusive classrooms, and hearts unlocked by stories like Guddu’s victory over water, not political posturing.

Why you must sit in that darkness and let it scorch you: Go. Go watch the film. Not for charity. Not for Aamir. Not even for the ten breathtaking stars. Go because Sitare Zameen Par is the reckoning we've spent lifetimes avoiding. It forces us to confront the horrifyingly beautiful truth: We are all, every single one of us, gloriously, irrevocably broken. Our abilities are fleeting illusions. Our independence is a carefully constructed myth. We are all, fundamentally, interdependent. Go, so you can connect with fragile, beautiful, imperfect humanity.

As the final frames fade and the harsh theatre lights stab your eyes, you'll fumble for your phone, desperate to re-enter the numbing noise of the "real" world. Don't. Sit in the devastating silence.

Let the tears come – not tears of pity for "them," but tears of recognition for us. For every time you averted your gaze. For every time you chose efficiency over empathy. For every fortress you built around your own fragility. 

Sitare Zameen Par isn't just entertainment. It's a collective funeral for the myth of normalcy. It's a baptism in the messy, magnificent truth: Every human has a star, a sitara, inside them; it's just that the darkness stops us from seeing it.

The darkness isn't out there. It's the shadow we cast when we refuse to acknowledge our own light, and the light in every shattered, beautiful piece of humanity around us. Go. Be broken. Only then can we begin to mend this fractured world, one raw, authentic, perfectly imperfect heartbeat at a time. The stars on Earth aren't in the sky. They're sitting next to you, waiting for you to finally see them.

The greatest disability is not in the body or mind but in the soul that refuses to see its own reflection in the broken mirror.

Satyen K Bordoloi
Indian Express