Aamir Khan received the 11th   Gollapudi Srinivas National award for the best debut Director for his much acclaimed film Taare Zamin Par. Instituted in 1997 in tribute to the young Gollapudi Srinivas who was swept away by tides at Vizag while shooting his debut film in 1992, precisely a spot near the sea where many popular films like Ek Duje Ke Liye were shot.

It was an evening of stars with Aamir Khan, PadmaBhushan Jagjit Singh , Anupam Kher , K Balachandran (KB), Bidhu Vinod Chopra and of course the brothers and relatives of Srinivas who have turned a tragedy into celebration  - celebration of excellence and youth. Every year I usually attend the event unless I am away. This award function over the years has recognized debut directors from various parts of the country with a very distinguished panel of Jury who go through the evaluation. I consider Gollapudi Srinivas National Award as the most credible and poignant award function and way above the usual ones where marketing gizmos overtake talent or human values. May be this is the reason why Aamir who usually does not attend any award function decided to accept this award.

The function began with Pandit Jagjit Singh’s Gazhal. The response from the audience must have surprised him; Chennai has become such a Gazhal loving city. Rajeev Menon’s daughter Saraswathi read out a poem composed by her. When she recited “many cried and cried and my book remained incomplete…”it was difficult to hold tears. A curtain raiser was made by Rajeev Menon as a tribute to young Srinivas where hope is expressed that others would carry forward the innings after Sachin gets out illustrating the subsequent new young directors would carry forward the dream that the young Srinivas left incomplete.

Felicitating Aamir, KB said, Aamir is the dawn (and not don – said with humours)) of Indian cinema. He said, “I quote Charlie Chaplin, who once said life laughs at you when you are sad and smiles at you when you are happy. But life salutes you when you make others happy. This movie made me cry but still made me happy. I salute you Aamir. Indian Cinema is now in safe hands “KB also referred to Aamir as the M S Dhoni of Indian cinema. After 1983 Indian Team won the world cup through Lagaan. He was referring to all the films of Aamir like Rang De Basanthi and said Aamir’s films are really inspirational and international. Our Society can realize its shortcomings through such great films. Aamir was so moved by the speech and the spontaneous applause from the audience and others present that he actually broke down while receiving the award and making the speech afterwards. He later collected the written speech from KB saying he would preserve this to show the same to his grand children some day.

Bidhu Vinod Chopra grew up together with Aamir and was recollecting how they both used to make their omlettes and break fast and how in spite of  fame and money Aamir has not changed a bit and remains the same undefiled person as he was seventeen years back. He described Aamir’s Tare Zamin Par as a poem out of a film.

The humanity of Aamir again came to fore when he called on the stage and introduced Prasoon Joshi and Ram Madhvani for their contribution to the film in creating the lyrics and graphics. I saw in him a team man, a leader who always shares the success with others. He also announced to donate his prize money from this award to MGR film studio in Chennai for the development of the industry. Here is an actor, I felt who thinks different and does different things – being away from those usual scandals of stardom.

Anupam Kher while delivering the Gollapudi Srinivas memorial lecture titled “Children of bigger God” said he saw courage in Aamir Khan when going against the usual trend of doing a formula cinema in today’s marketing era he chose to make a film on a special child. Remembering his own childhood growing up in a lower middle class family, he stated there was poverty but everyone in the family was very happy. When he asked his grandma once why it was so, the grandma replied that they were happy because they live with dreams – one day they will have good clothes, good food and so on. Being in a joint family he always had someone in his childhood to answer his queries and so many whys that the children grow up with. He recalled how one of his uncles who always had answered all his queries including an answer that Kolkatta was the capital of India!
However this helps the child to grow up with lot more assurance and optimism, face the world more confidently with answers to all questions and the decision that we must live happy.

With fame in bollywood, Anupam stated that life had changed, but it took a turn when he saw a bus accident near Juhu carrying special children. People of the ever busy Mumbai did not have time to stop by to help and instead to his horror he realized that people started watching the incident as if something funny had happened.  This incident moved him a lot and besides helping these children he later came forward and taught speech therapy for almost a year in their school never missing any of the Wednesdays every week in spite of his busy schedule.

Every time he went to the school he used to carry food and gifts for the kids and there was a kid by the name Rishi Sahani who was always looking sad whenever Anupam gave him gifts and he later found out it was because he felt he could not give Anupam anything in return. One day an excited Rishi had requested Anupam to stay back and after all the kids had left he handed over a toffee to Anupam.  The gesture had moved Anupam to a great extent he said “To this date I preserve the toffee given by Rishi”. There was another occasion when Anupam asked a boy what he would like to become on growing up; he said he wants to become an insaan! There is so much to life than movie and fame. In another incident, during hot summer afternoon, his car was stranded for a long time in traffic in Mumbai he noticed a small girl falling asleep keeping her face on the window of his car while feeling the chill of the A/C inside.

The world around us today revolves in such a fast paced way that we have become immune to all such small incidents, urging that we should not turn a blind eye to all that happen around us.  Anupam concluded by saying that these incidents should in fact help us to introspect and transform ourselves into a better individual. In fact he has  recently converted a piece of land at the outskirt of Mumbai that he earlier bought for  making a farm house  into an orphanage .He was remembering his grand father who used to say goodness never goes waste . That’s why Tare Zamin Par is a land mark film. It talks about the special children. And all these special children are the symbol of hope and honesty … the children of bigger God!