I recently started a premium subscription on YouTube, and it’s been nice for the purposes of revisiting 90s movies that I watched over and over as a young adult. WITHOUT ads. Some of these movies are not available for streaming anywhere else, and I’m not buying DVDs anymore unless even YouTube doesn’t have the movie I want.

Anyway, the feed suggested a movie the other day called Apna Asmaan, and I decided to go for it. The title means “Our Sky,” and the movie is from 2007. It stars Shobana (squee) and Irrfan Khan (RIP).

The two play a married couple with a teenage autistic son named Buddhi (played by Dhruv Piyush Panjuani). I was impressed at the nuanced approach toward every family member. There is no lack of love for their son because why should he not be loved. He is a talented artist, but not in the sense of being a savant (that trope is so annoying).

The parents are also not somehow aeons more enlightened than their peers. They want him to be independent and able to have a career someday. They worry about his future. They have ableist ideas like anyone else would have if they didn’t learn from actually autistic advocates. They have to deal with the stress of neighbors complaining about Buddhi’s stimming sounds (“He needs to be quiet because my kid has exams,” meaning “My kid actually has a future so don’t let your kid get in the way of that higher purpose”).

They also get stares and judgment from randos in public, which, I can vouch for how painful this is—your own child, who came from your body, gestated from your most intuitive dreams and sincerest hopes, being shrunk away from by others—that is a wound that never heals, especially since Desi culture does, in general, have kindness and regard for the young. Just not for our beloveds in a way that is real, and tolerant of their self expression.

And the plot does not shy away from depicting how much the parents have given up so they can keep Buddhi happy and safe. Ravi Kumar, the dad, basically avoids going home, and usually comes home late, and super drunk. The mom, Padmini, does nothing but parenting duties. She sometimes takes her salangai (dance anklets) out and yearns for her lost dreams. Shobana (the actress) is an accomplished Bharatanatyam dancer, and, as a former practitioner myself, this one lands really hard for me. But most of the time, she is taking Buddhi to do the round of temples and other places of worship, and also trying (and failing) to get him admitted to a mainstream school.

I knew watching all this that someone who is a parent of an autistic person wrote this script, and, sure enough, it was borne out by my online search. It wasn’t so much the details; it was more the way they didn’t over-dramatize any of it. We love Buddhi just as much as we empathize with Ravi and Padmini.

An added complexity is that, when Buddhi was an infant, Ravi dropped him on his head. So Padmini carries blame in her heart, and there is a decided gulf between husband and wife. They even sleep in separate twin beds. Ouch.

One character who is easy to like is Buddhi’s neurologist, Dr Sen, played by the versatile Rajat Kapoor. When Padmini expresses her despair to him, he tells her, without being toxic positive about it, that it’s not Buddhi who needs to be cured, but the parents who need to see him from a deeper perspective. Buddhi paints well, but neither parent sees this as a plus; rather, painting is “preventing” Buddhi from focusing on arithmetic. Again, very realistic, given how STEM-obsessed our culture is.

There is a neighbor girl and her yappy dog, both of whom like Buddhi, and don’t mind his earworm of “HUM HONGE KAAMYAAB.” Haha.

Ravi and Padmini independently become aware of a doctor with a huge television presence, Dr Sathya (Anupam Kher), who claims to have found a cure for intellectual disabilities. The movie is so good at the annoying shit too. Dr Sathya calls his approach “cosmic therapy.” OMFG. But let’s be honest about how many people do say that crap to us, and how many parents do truly want to feel they tried everything. When you’re staring down a timeline that’s pretty much permanent, and everyone and everything that mattered to you has left you to do nothing but this, not to mention everyone is telling you to visit Swami So and So in the Himalayas, and also humble bragging about their Columbia-vaasi kid, it takes a lot of inner work to resist.

Ravi pays a visit to Dr Sathya, offering him a human subject for free (there’s that risk of turning our kids into guinea pigs), and we have the dramatic irony of being able to see what a malevolent quack the man is. He draws information out of Ravi which he uses to manipulate him. “Of course your wife wants Buddhi to be fine. And you want her to love you again.” Uhh. That’s very low.

Understandably unsure about whether this is the best thing for Buddhi, Ravi asks about side effects, and Dr Sathya grows cold and says something like “You know what? Forget it. You won’t be able to do anything for your son.” Of course Ravi begs and apologizes. Grr. Then Dr Sathya gets a very convenient emergency phone call, and accidentally on purpose leaves the vial and syringe behind, which Ravi pockets and runs off with. It’s free, after all. And the only stated side effect is that Buddhi will lose his memories of the past, and how can that be bad…

There is a tension-filled argument between Ravi (bewda aka sodden drunk) and Padmini, and Ravi locks Buddhi’s bedroom door and injects the sleeping kid with Dr Sathya’s medication, while Padmini bangs on the door in terror.

Akan Datang (Part Two will be posted soon).

Radha.