“Kya itna bura hun main maa”; ( Am I that bad, mom?); this heartfelt line from the song in Taare Zameen Par hits a different chord with everyone. The movie portrays the struggles of an undiagnosed dyslexic child sent to boarding school. Seldom do we see what happen on the other side- what the other side experiences when out of sight. When we speak about cinema and mental health awareness, particularly for students, we are entering a space that is both deeply personal and inherently political.
Cinema becomes not just entertainment but an intervention into the ideological space of mental health discourse. It does not merely represent the reality but acts as a symptom of our repressed traumas and desires. In terms of mental health, cinema often captures the repressed struggles that individual especially students experience in a hyper-competitive, alienating society. The cinematic narratives of suffering, isolation and the quest for identity tap into the collective psyche, exposing the cracks in the neoliberal educational system, which treats students as products to the optimized rather than individuals to be nurtured.
