As February rolls in, so does a familiar hush in Indian homes. Timetables appear on refrigerators, relatives begin asking “boards kab hai?”, and children in Classes 10 and 12 feel the weight of expectations settle on their shoulders. For parents, too, exam season brings its own anxieties — not just about marks, but about their child’s mental and emotional well-being.
It wasn’t always a conversation we knew how to have.
Nearly two decades ago, Taare Zameen Par entered Indian living rooms and gently disrupted how many families thought about learning, intelligence, and failure. The film didn’t offer grand solutions — it simply asked parents to pause, observe, and listen. And slowly, for some families, the language around exams began to shift.
Ishaan Awasthi, and the silence we missed
At the heart of Taare Zameen Par was Ishaan Awasthi — a child who struggled in classrooms that measured intelligence through neat handwriting, quick calculations, and exam scores. Labelled lazy, careless, and difficult, Ishaan absorbed the quiet cruelty of repeated failure — not because he lacked effort, but because no one recognised how differently he learned.
Through Ishaan Awasthi, Taare Zameen Par taught families to pause, observe, and see learning beyond report cards. Photograph: (ScoopWhoop)
There’s a moment in the film when Ishaan stops speaking altogether. His report cards worsen. His drawings disappear. And yet, the adults around him remain focused on only one question: What’s wrong with this child?
The film’s most powerful intervention wasn’t a miracle cure — it was attention. A teacher who listened. Parents who were finally asked to see beyond marks. And a reminder that when children fail repeatedly, it is often the system — not the child — that has failed first.
For many Indian parents, Ishaan’s story lingered long after the credits rolled. It introduced a new possibility: that failure could be a signal, not a sentence.
What Taare Zameen Par changed inside Indian living rooms
The film didn’t dismantle exam pressure overnight. But it softened something. The language around learning grew gentler. Marks were no longer the only proof of intelligence. Struggle wasn’t always equated with disobedience or lack of effort.
Most importantly, Taare Zameen Par made it acceptable for parents to ask different questions — not just how much did you score?, but how are you feeling?What’s difficult?What do you need?
Years later, that shift shows up not in grand declarations, but in small, everyday parenting choices during exam season.
Here’s what real parents have to say
For Manabi Katoch, Chief Editor (Hindi & Regional) at The Better India team, and mother to 15-year-old Sidhiksha, exam time has never been about chasing consistency in marks.
“What worries me most is her mental state,” she says.
Manabi’s approach to failure comes less from cinema and more from memory. As a child, she struggled academically till Class 7 — not because she lacked ability, but because she felt out of place in a school where most students came from far more privileged backgrounds.
For parents like Manabi Katoch, exams are less about results and more about protecting a child’s mental well-being. Photograph: (Manabi Katoch)
“It took me years to realise that environment affects learning deeply,” she reflects.
That awareness shapes how she speaks to her daughter today. Marks, she believes, rarely tell the full story.
“If a child isn’t doing well, it doesn’t mean they aren’t intelligent. There could be ten different reasons breaking the child from the inside.”
Instead of reacting to results, Manabi focuses on comfort and curiosity. When Sidhishka underperforms, the conversation is simple.
“Exams are made to understand what we need to learn more. If you made a mistake, it’s good — now you know what to work on.”
‘Failure doesn’t reduce your value here’
One of the strongest shifts in Manabi’s parenting has been separating her child’s self-worth from exam outcomes.
“We remind her every day what we love about her,” she says. “That doesn’t change with marks.”
There is also conscious restraint — no instant reactions, no disappointment hanging in the air.
“We just ask if she understood what needs to be addressed. That makes her comfortable enough to share any result.”
Manabi speaks openly about her own failures, too — something she believes helps her daughter see adults as human, not unreachable standards of success.
What support actually feels like to a teen
For Sidhishka, support during exams doesn’t come in big gestures.
“It helps when my parents say, ‘Jo galtiyan hui thi, wo samajh aaye na?’”( As long as you understood the mistakes you made, that’s what matters), she shares.
She feels safe discussing stress and anxiety at home and during exams, and support looks surprisingly ordinary to her.
“I’m not scolded for not doing chores,” she says.
She explains how there’s no dramatic shift in household behaviour during boards — no heightened tension, no fear-filled silence. That normalcy, perhaps, is what makes the difference.
As exams approach, what do children really need?
Nearly two decades after Taare Zameen Par, its message feels quietly urgent again. As board exams loom, children don’t just need revision schedules and motivation — they need reassurance that their worth is not under negotiation.
When home feels safe, mistakes become lessons — and exams lose the power to define self-worth.
Photograph: (Netflix)
They need to know that struggling doesn’t make them disappointing. That a bad paper doesn’t cancel their effort. That love at home isn’t conditional on performance.
For parents, the film — and stories like Manabi and Sidhishka’s — offer a reminder that learning is rarely linear, and confidence is built as much in conversations as in classrooms.
And for students standing on the edge of exam halls, carrying their fears and hopes together, perhaps the most important thing to hear is this: exams measure what you know today — not who you are, and not who you can become.
Sometimes, changing the outcome begins by changing the conversation.
