Way To Go:
A few years ago, Anupam Kher had starred volunteering with a school for specially abled children in Mumbai, so at least he can claim to know what he is talking about when he directs and co-writes (with Abhishek Dixit), Tanvi The Great, a film about an autistic young woman.
Kher himself plays Colonel Raina, a retired military officer, who lives alone in Lansdowne, a pretty cantonment hill town in Uttarakhand. His son, Samar (Karan Tacker) was killed in action and his wife died soon after. His regimented life is disrupted when his daughter-in-law Vidya (Pallavi Joshi) leaves her autistic daughter Tanvi (Shubhangi) with the Colonel. She needs to travel for a few months to the US for a workshop on autism, on which she is an expert, and can’t leave Tanvi alone in Delhi, where they live.
Vidya indulges Tanvi’s every demand, and at a later point in the film, calls her condition a “superpower”. However, for an elderly man, whose parenting skills have rusted, any kid who fusses about her room, has restricted food choices and throws tantrums, would have been a handful. Tanvi’s autism exacerbates his distress. She refuses to call him anything but Colonel Raina and proceeds to upend his routine. At first, her insistence on rearranging the furniture, refusing the disciple of the music class run by Raza (Boman Irani), where she is admitted, and being generally contrary upsets the grandfather. He is thrown for a loop, however, when instead of continuing her music lessons—she is a fabulous singer, according to Raza–she insists on joining the army.
The stern Major Srinivasan (Arvind Swamy), whose life Samar had saved, is manipulated into admitting Tanvi to the Services Selection Board training. The recalcitrant teen who “runs like a duck” (according to the Major) is soon training perfectly with the best of them. Her speech defects and uncoordinated movements are also sorted.
The gradual understanding that develops between Colonel Raina and Tanvi is the emotional heart-warming part of the story. When autism and other mental health issues are not understood too well by people, it does not help to portray Tanvi’s antics as cute or funny (the recent Sitaare Zameen Par had the same problem). It could not be easy to raise a neurodivergent child, and a parent’s struggle must not be taken lightly. The reduction of Tanvi’s symptoms with military training seems to suggest that these kids are just difficult, and there’s nothing like some discipline and focus to make them like the others. The word ‘normal’ gets Vidya bristling. When Raina asks what is the opposite of normal, the answer he eventually comes up with is “extraordinary.” But all autistic children do not have remarkable talents, so parents or carers have to work around their abilities. Vidya has coined the slogan “Different but not less,” for Tanvi, which works her case; it can’t be a catchall for all kids on the spectrum.
Eventually, what Tanvi accomplishes is like a fairy tale. If any other civilian kid had thrown the kind of tantrum she did in her selection board interview, she (or he) would have been thrown out on their ear. So Tanvi’s superpower, really, is the kind of outburst that has adults give in to her demands. It would be a spoiler to reveal what Tanvi ends up doing after her great feat of determination, but it goes against all the rah rahs that went before.
Shot with a kind of golden glow by Keiko Nakahara, with MM Keeravani’s music adding to the happy mood, Tanvi The Great is a gooey-chocolate of a film—a bit too sweet but also feel-good. Anupam Kher’s performance is a highlight and he builds a rapport with Tanvi, that gets more charming as his mind opens to accept her strong will, and his expression softens from irritation to empathy—with some help from his army buddy, Brigadier Joshi (Jackie Shroff in a pleasant cameo). Shubhangi does well as Tanvi, consistent in her portrayal of an autistic girl, whose obstinacy takes her where she wants to go.
(This piece first appeared in scroll.in)
