Directed by R.S. Prasanna, Sitaare Zameen Par is a heartfelt adaptation of the 2018 Spanish film, Campeones, that teaches us a thing or two about life and alters our outlook towards things. It’s the sweet and emotional journey of a seemingly insensitive coach who is fired from his position and sentenced to community service training a bunch of specially-abled kids after he’s caught drunk driving. So let’s find out what happened in Sitaare Zameen Par, how the coach’s perspective about life changed after he met those kids, who he felt were good for nothing.
Spoiler Alert
Why was Gulshan fired from his job?
Gulshan was the kind of man who had run away from his real emotions, landing him in a place where he no longer understood his own self. Sometimes in life, you go so far running away from your past that you do not know how to get back home. He found flaws in others when the real problem lay with him. He was the assistant coach of the state basketball team, but his unprofessional behavior had become a problem for his senior, Paswan. Gulshan had a fight with Paswan, and things became so heated up that he ended up slapping him. Paswan had ignored his disrespect and impertinence, but this time around, he was not ready to drop it when Gulshan hit him in front of everyone. He took the matter to the administration, and Gulshan was fired from his position. About a week before the incident, Gulshan and his wife, Suneeta, had a disagreement of sorts about conceiving a child, and the former had decided to leave his house and go to his mother’s place. Gulshan was a man who hated serious talks; who ran away from confrontations. Deep down, he was scared to face his real self; he was scared to talk about his trauma, his wounds.
Life had hit rock bottom, but he was still not ready to confront his feelings. To make everything worse, he was drunk driving when he crashed his car into a police vehicle. Then he had the audacity to fight with the officers and argue with them that it was not his fault. That was how Gulshan functioned. He never admitted his fault in any situation, which was why he landed himself in such a mess. The court gave him an order to coach specially abled children for the next 3 months. He went to meet the NGO owner, Kartar, and he had no clue how he would coach a team like that. Gulshan believed all those children to be crazy and didn’t think that they were capable of doing anything in life, just like the majority of people thought. Gulshan didn’t think that they were normal, and he didn’t want to waste his energy on them. Kartar Singh knew that it would take time, but Gulshan’s perspective would change eventually. He knew what the kids deserved and what they were capable of doing. Gulshan had no option; the court had given him a strict order to coach them for 3 months. He felt he was stuck there, not understanding that it would be a life changing experience for him. He had gone there to coach them, but in reality, he was being coached about how to lead his life.
How did the kids change Gulshan’s perspective?
Such is our society that we don’t think that specially abled people deserve happiness. We don’t treat them and look at them as humans. We see them as abominations, as burdens who do not deserve humane treatment. One day, when Gulshan was really sick and tired of dealing with the kids, Kartar Singh told him about the backgrounds they came from. He told Gulshan how they excelled in what they did and how their unique perspectives made them see things that others didn’t notice. Each one of those kids worked really hard and did so earnestly. Raju worked at a nursery, as he loved being around nature. Lotus worked at a dye factory, where he had a different hair color every week. Sharmaji lived with his father and uncle and worked at a cafe.
Guddu loved being around animals and had a knack for training the most untamable animals that came to the farm. They weren’t able to talk and conduct themselves like the so-called normal people, but they were very sharp. They realized when a person got happy or sad. They realized when somebody was depressed. They understood what affection meant, probably because of the way they were looked down upon; they didn’t consider anybody inferior to them, and most of all, they were aware of what people thought about them. In a heartbreaking scene, one of the kids, Sunil, told Gulshan how he knew that nobody deserved to have a kid like them; he said that he knew that he was dim-witted and that he couldn’t do things that others could very easily. Their unique perspective about life and about people amazed Gulshan. He saw how pure they were and how bad they were made to feel on an everyday basis. It felt as if they had become accustomed to all that belittling, and now it has become an integral part of their lives. They didn’t want to prove anything to the world, as long as they could do what they liked. Slowly, the wall that Gulshan had created between him and them started to dissipate. Gulshan was forced to introspect on his own actions, thinking about what kind of human he had become, and, moreover, understand the reason behind his own actions. The tournament started, and the team started their winning streak. Gulshan started to feel attached to them, but there was still a long way to go because his preconceived notions held him back to a certain extent.
Did the kids win the tournament?
One of the team members, Hargovind, who had invisible autism and was the strongest player of the team, decided not to take part in the tournament. Gulshan wanted to know the reason behind that decision; he knew that if Hargovind was there in the team, the chances of them winning the tournament increased manifold. Hargovind was the captain of the team that had won the gold medal in the tournament organized for the specially-abled players. He got to know that his coach had included two members in the team who did not suffer from any neurodevelopmental conditions. He didn’t like people cheating, and so he reported the issue to the authorities. As a result, his gold medal was snatched from him, and for the first time in his life, he had seen his mother crying in front of his own eyes. Gulshan went to his house and convinced him and his mother to let him rejoin the team. Hargovind decided to play in the finals. But another mishap happened, and Kartar Ji ran out of funds, and he didn’t have money to send the team to Mumbai. Gulshan thought of a plan, and he asked Suneeta to help his cause.
Suneeta used to be an actress, and Gulshan asked her to dress like a cop and come with him to meet the employer of one of the players on his team, Kareem Qureshi. He told the shop owner that he knew that he made Kareem work for long hours, and he didn’t even compensate him properly. Suneeta told the shop owner that she would take strict action against him, and that’s when the latter decided to settle the matter by sponsoring the team. With that money, the accommodation and the travel expenses were taken care of, and the team finally reached the finals. Gulshan’s team of misfits showed the world the real meaning of sportsmanship. They didn’t win the tournament, but they celebrated like they were the champions. For them, it was the journey that mattered. They were happy that they were able to participate in such a tournament, and for them, that was the real prize. Gulshan learned something that day: winning didn’t mean that you had to defeat somebody, and the happiness that came from someone’s misery wasn’t true happiness. In the world of those children, everybody could be happy at the same time. Just because they lost didn’t mean they had to feel like they were any less than the other team, and vice versa.
How Did Gulshan And Suneeta Mend Their Relationship?
Gulshan’s father had left him when he was just 8 years old, and from that day, he had developed abandonment issues. The moment he felt that he was becoming attached to somebody, he gave them a reason to hate him. He ran away from the situation because he was scared of being hurt in the same manner as he was when he was 8 years old. He also felt that he wouldn’t be a great father and end up becoming like his old man, which was why he didn’t want to have a kid. Suneeta wanted to be a mother, and she couldn’t fulfill her wish, as her partner was just not ready to entertain that talk. But being with the kids made Gulshan understand that every individual is different, and everybody has their own unique perspective. That uniqueness made the world a beautiful place to live. He understood that just because his father had run away didn’t mean that he would also be a bad father. He also started to understand that just because somebody disagreed with him didn’t mean that they were wrong.
In Sitaare Zameen Par’s ending, Gulshan got to know that his mother was having an affair with Daulatji, the house help who stayed with them. He was shocked, and he just couldn’t accept that his mother could do something like that. But then he saw the kids, and he realized that his mother was also human, and she deserved to be happy in life. Though he still didn’t want to talk to Daulatji, he accepted his mother’s relationship. Gulshan decided to conquer his fears and his inhibitions and become a father. He realized that actually he was the one who was being coached by the kids, not the other way round. Paswan gave him a call and told him that he was pretty impressed by what he had been able to achieve with the kids. He said that he was retiring from his position in a couple of months, and he had recommended Gulshan’s name for the position of the head coach of the state basketball team. When the time came to say goodbye to his team, Gulshan couldn’t hold back his tears. He wanted to just run away without saying the final goodbye. But while handing the keys of his office to the new basketball coach, he realized that he couldn’t leave without meeting that amazing bunch of kids. Goodbyes are important, as somebody said, words left unsaid can hurt more than the parting thread. An emotional Gulshan went to meet his students, and that’s when they told him to stop being melodramatic, as he was not going to die. The journey came to a beautiful end, and it made Gulshan see things that he was impervious to in his life and obviously made him a better human being.
