Films for and about children are so rare you wonder if anyone cares about the quality of entertainment offered to children in this country. The track record in Hindi is specially abysmal, with Shekhar Kapur’s Masoom about spousal infidelity and a one-night stand being perceived as a kiddies’ film! Only because three children—Jugal Hansraj, Urmila Matondkar, and Aradhana—held centre stage. True, parts of the film showing the three kids in intimate interaction did jell well with younger listeners, and the song in Lakdi ki Kaathi, written specially for children by Gulzar and sung by specially by kids, is an all-time juvenile favourite. But all said and done, Masoom was as much a children’s film as Ram Gopal Varma’s Jungle was a Tarzan-like adventure. In the last millennium, 9 out of 10 films featuring children in pivotal roles have them mouthing super-solemn lines. To add insult to verbosity, they are even made to dress and walk like miniature adults. Master Hrithik Roshan in his debut film Bhagwan Dada, where his Nanaji J. Om Prakash directed the future swoon-sayer like a grownup with mannerisms and dialogues that belonged to Woody Allen’s cinema rather than Walt Disney. One director who feels deeply for children is Gulzar. The sensitivity and the lack of the patronising spirit are patently on display in his films. In Khushboo (no relation to “Baby” Khushboo from Sunil Dutt’s Dard Ka Rishta—what a pain!—who grew up into the voluptuous heartthrob of Tamil cinema), Gulzar's little character Master Rajoo spent all his time cycling around the courtyard and behaving like a kid for a change. And when his mom tried to put him to sleep with a lullaby, the boy reasoned, “How can I go to sleep if you sing so loudly?” A few years after Khushboo, Gulzar made the whole film Kitaab, which revolved around Rajoo’s character. Gulzar could make Rajoo behave naturally for the camera. Somewhere inside him, the child that he was once, and the child that he bounced on his lap when his daughter Meghna was born, remained alive. That explained why Rajoo didn’t behave and sound like a motorized brat in Kitaab. The director has to remain in touch with the child within the filmmaker for the child to ‘perform’ without looking like a monkey doing tricks on the roadside. That has been the case with most child stars, from the Iranian sister Daisy and Honey to the embarrassingly filmy Baby Guddu (where did she vanish to?) and the solemn-and-grownup Sana Saeed in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. Most Hindi film directors of the past applied the rules of melodramatic, ostensibly mature acting to the young cast. The exceptions were filmmakers like Shekhar Kapoor, who handled his young cast beautifully in both Masoom and Mr. India, and even in Bandit Queen, where the little girl who played the young Phoolan was quite simply outstanding. Shekhar Kapoor’s Mr. India featured an ensemble cast of young actors (including Aftab Shivdasani, who was rather moist than mast behind the ears). It wasn’t easy to make them act naturally. In Masoom Kapoor spent hours coaxing normal expressions out of his young cast, playing cricket with the kids, humouring, mollycoddling them until they were softened to putty in the director’s hands. In Prakash Arora’s Boot Polish, which was ghost-directed by Raj Kapoor, the utterly filmy Baby Naaz discarded all her adult mannerisms to play the fragile, vulnerable street child Belu with all the understated intensity that we witnessed so many decades later in Mira Nair’s film about street children Salaam Bombay. To get natural performances out of children is akin to commanding the sun to rise from the East. Natural processes are impossible to control. Quite surprisingly, super-cinematographer Pravin Bhatt managed the impossible in Bhavna. As the little boy who grows up thinking his mother (Shabana Azmi in a heart-ripping performance) to be his aunt, Master Makrand reportedly became so involved with the process of playacting that he would often sit on the sets and cry for his bereft character. Later Makrand was equally at home as the boy dying of cancer in Mahesh Bhatt’s Kaash. There was nothing filmy, ostentatious, or phoney when the boy clung to his Papa’s bosom and wept, “I want to live.” We wept with him. As we had wept with little Sachin when he sang Ma hi ganga ma hi jamuna ma hi teerath dham for his dying mother (Leela Chitnis) in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Majhli Didi. In Gulzar’s Parichay, the mind instantly goes back to the brat pack in Gulzar’s version of The Sound of Music. Master Raju, Master Ravi, and Master Kishore—they were all'master’ bratsmen in Parichay, delivering smashing sixers through their unrehearsed impishness.