Children of Heaven

One evening we were at Nandita's place at Navakriti. Prapti's mama had left a DVD of an Iranian movie called "Children of Heaven" by Majid Majidi. It was little Prapti's favourite movie. I seen have other Iranian movies before at the Osian and I love the way they portray ordinary women.

Nandita, Brishti, Lakshmi and I watched the sub-titled movie. Brishti could read the subtitles and so watched it intently. The movie is in Persian and is beautiful. It is silently shot in a neighbourhood with small lanes. It is about the bonding between a brother and a sister. The brother takes his sister's shoe to a cobbler to get it mended. On the way back he stops at a vegetable shop an leaves the packet with the mended shoes in between the baskets on a stack of garbage which gets cleared and taken when the boy is still in the shop.

The children decide not to tell their parents because they cannot afford to buy another pair of shoes. So the girl wears the boy's well-worn pair of sneakers to school in the morning runs back and hands them over to her brother so that he can get to school. This simple plot leads to a lot of situations. The plot is absolutely brilliantly built up and could happen in any of our children's lives.

The shoe falls into an open drain one day and gets dirty when Zahra, the girl is running back home. You don't notice that the movie is silent. I did not too. I could just hear the girl panting as she was running back home. I only noticed when Nandita pointed out. One track of very gentle music but music that tells you that something is going to happen begins as the girl is half-way home and is jumping over many drains. Only when this happens do you realise that there was no other sound except the girl's feet and her panting. The movie does not bludgeon you. It awakens you with very gentle sound. Ali, the boy is waiting.

He is late to school and the headmaster shouts at him and it leads to a series of lies. The boy who is ashamed to tell him that he shares the shoes tells him that he fell. But the socks are peeing out of his pocket and are dry...

Lakshmi just got it that they were brother and sister and they were sharing a shoe. So she just wore one pair of shoe that was lying there and was running around and then would hand it over and she would be the brother who would wear it again. She knew they were brother and sister and she felt their bonding and love. She realised the tensions and love in the family. All she understood then was that they were brother and sister and were sharing a shoe. But she kept asking questions periodically...

Q. Why is she wearing something around her head?

A. She lives in Iran and that is the design of clothes there...

was one which I remember.

She cried that night and said she also wanted a brother to share things with. We asked Vish's brother if he could get the CD for us. I then discovered through my Facebook community that many people I knew had seen this movie many times over.

It so happened that we were in school to pick up some CDs the next day and Lakshmi asked Nandita for that Girl and Boy CD. We then took it home and she saw it again with Manju aunty. Then she saw it again with Manju aunty's nieces. And with Vish the next morning. By now I have realised that kids like repetition. That is how they learn. And each time there is a quantum jump.

Just this one movie has taken us all over...(not in order)

Q. Where is Iran?

A. We go to the talking globe...Now I'm forced to find exactly where Iran is rather than knowing vaguely...

Q. What language are they speaking in?

A. Persian...

Q. Do you know Persian?

A. No. But they are writing it in English below and that is how I know what they are saying...

Q. But how are they writing? (the children's notebook where they exchange notes instead of talking in front of their parents is clearly visible...)

A. We have a Tulika book called "Can You find me?" written by Manjula Padmanabhan. It has a page full of objects and one of them is different...In each page "can you find me?" is written in a different language and then in English below.

One page is in Persian. She suddenly remembered that and brought the book. We read the persian text in English and it goes the other way. She remembers that and tells her dad.

Q. Why are they making soup and taking to the neighbour's place?

A. That is what neighbour's do. help each other...they are old people and like to see children and Zara's mom loves them...

L. But we never do that...take things to Goel uncle's house...

Q. Why does she not have another pair of shoes? I have so many...you just have to go to the ATM and get money and buy another...

A. You are lucky. Your daddy has money. Even though other people are good, they sometimes don't have money...

L. She can have my shoes. I have two pairs of sneakers to go to Mirambika. She needs sneakers to go to school and she can have one pair of mine.

Q. Why is Roya's daddy wearing dark glasses and she is helping him?

A. Because his eyes are kharab...and he needs help...

Q. Why is Zara taking caring of the baby? She will drop him...Ali is bigger...

Q. Why is the baby sucking the thumb -- you told me not to...

Q. Why is Ali's teacher getting gussa with him? he is late because his sister got his shoe wet...

Q. What are they serving in the mosque? Why is Ali's daddy crying? Do daddy's also cry?

This just went on and on...

And in between she drew the drain in crayon on the floor and ran...They play a hopscotch kind of game...we drew that and played...

The next day Manju aunty, I and Lakshmi made a Lego model of the neighbourhood in the movie...It was Manju Aunty's idea...

We made the narrow neighbourhood and the adjacent large city. In the small neighbourhood where Zara and her brother live, we made the narrow alleys, the open drain, the place where shoe falls, her house and the small fountain or fish pond in front of their house where they wash things and also play.

Once Manju aunty had made the layout of the city with two neighbourhoods, Lakshmi got going. She made individual pieces. In the large city she made a sky craper and put a large fan on top of the building. "The fan cools the whole place down" she held forth. One morning because of the crumbs we had dropped on the model, there were ants in it. Lakshmi howled and we told her that the ghost city now had people.

That evening, Alpana and her little daugher Urvee dropped in home. We showed them our city. Alpana, an architect and an energy efficiency consultant built a narrow building and showed Urvee that this building wuold have light all over and would not need articificial lighting and put it in Lakshmi's city. Lakshmi heard that and built a similar one and repeated that! Her earlier sky scraper was square and squat!

Then Lakshmi was showing Alpana Zara's house. And she was trying to show Alpana teh road in which ran and the drain...because of the way Lego is the drain is as big as the road on both sides...Alpana mistook the drain for the road...and then she figured and was telling lakshmi --- oh! this is an open drain and that is how it was before...

Soon Urvee was making little houses of such interesting shapes...We had to tell Lakshmi that it was ok to dismantle the city because we were architects and had to build many different models each time...

Alpana saw Lakshmi's fan over the building and said "This can also make electricity while cooling!

Lakshmi was pointing out at the city saying this was the electricity factory...

Alpana told her that the fan was the electricity factory...I had to tell Lakshmi then that this was a flat windmill...

We kept talking and chatting and watching Urvee and Neha didi play...and suddenly Lakshmi piped up saying "the fan only turns when the sun is hot!" Otherwise it is off!

Alpana was mumbling something about a sensor when Lakshmi pointed to a little green lego "factory" that she had put on the fan that knew when the sun was on!

That reminded me of two incidents...

The digital activism project that MIT did in the late nineties where they got children from across the world to express how they would like technology to make the world a better place...

A boy from rural china who had never see a computer before put a chip in a shoe in a drawing -- that was for his blind friend and it would tell him what to do after detecting the space...this was at that time the subject of post doctoral research at MIT...

Another when Brishti was so moved by the birds that she built a card board computer and a user interface where she could access all related info -- movies, sounds, songs and stories of any given bird easily...

This is the current subject of research at all major technology research labs...

You cannot teach! You have to consult the mind and learn together and magic happens...

It has also broadened my knowledge films...I google on the greatest Iranian films...found that they make brilliant children's films. The same director Majid Majidi has made another film called "Children of Paradise" where one of the children is blind...I have now also re-learnt from my geek cousin in the US how to download movies off the web...and that is my next project...The director has also given Prapti's dad permission to copy the film...