‘All of us are on the Autism Spectrum, some obvious, some less so’

IT IS THURSDAY night in rainwashed Mumbai. Aamir Khan is sitting in his well-appointed living room, surrounded by a protective circle of family and friends. There is chicken biryani on the table and a large bowl of mango that he is dipping into. His son Azad is cradling their Yorkshire Terrier Imli, while their other pet, the sloe-eyed Sundari slinks around. His co-star Genelia Deshmukh is seated on the window sill, soak­ing in praise for her performance. Aamir’s partner Gauri Spratt, quiet and thoughtful, soon joins him on the couch.

He has just premiered his new film, Sitaare Zameen Par, with his friends, led by fellow superstars Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan, in attendance. Other friends are dropping by to tell him what they feel—among them his director buddies Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, Ashutosh Gowariker, his daughter Ira Khan, and son-in-law Nupur Shikhare, and actors Riteish Deshmukh and Rhea Chakraborty. Aamir’s custom-made achkan, by Abu Jani-Sandeep Khosla, has been discarded, the pipe has been called for, and a long night of hanging out has begun. There is a palpable sense of relief that a movie about love, respect, and dignity has cut through the clut­ter at a time of strife and been embraced by the audience. Over the next few days, the film will clock higher numbers at the box office as word gets around about its star’s return to form.

Sure enough, by June 24, Sitaare Zameen Par has made `110 crore at the box office, sparked conversations around intellectual disability and elicited heartwarming reactions. There is one that Aamir has just read that has reduced him to tears, from Aadish Jain, the brother of a person living with cerebral palsy. “You have opened a door to our world and invited the entire country inside…You have shown disability not as a medical condi­tion, but as a different way of ex­periencing the world,” he writes. That’s not just filmmaking, adds the letter, but nation-building through storytelling.

It is a place Aamir is familiar with. For almost three decades, especially in the noughties, Aamir’s storytelling captured the pulse of an evolving India. When he chose a topic, it was expected of him that he would not rest until he examined it from all possible angles. Take the difficult issues he raised in his TV show, Satyamev Jayate, across three seasons between 2012 and 2014, ranging from child sexual abuse to toxic masculinity, from addic­tion to criminalisation of politics.

India admired and adored him. There was no crass inquisition of his motives, or calls to boycott products he endorsed, or doubts about his patriotism because of his children’s names. Much of that started with a remark at a public event in 2015 when he expressed a sense of insecurity and fear over rising instances of intolerance in the country. He found his views sucked into the bewildering circus of TV talking heads. For Hindi cin­ema’s Muslim superstars, it is common ground—we want them to be beloved celebrities, but we also see them as social commentators who fulfill our desire for performative nationalism.

IN THE RUN-UP to Sitaare Zameen Par, Aamir put himself out there, allowing himself to be grilled by TV interviewers, podcasters, and RJs about everything from his views on the Pahal­gam attack to his love life, questions he answered with grace and good humour. There were occasional tears, but also invisible trauma. As Aamir says, “Going into the film, we were all so vulnerable. We had put everything into it.”

It is not a new way of working for Aamir. “When RS Prasanna, the director, came to me with the story and when I saw the Spanish film, Campeones (2018), I fell in love with it. When Laal Singh Chaddha (2022) didn’t work, I was depressed. And I am a practical person, or so I think. I knew Sitaare Zameen Par would be difficult to make and promote, especially when people were not com­ing to the theatres. But I have one prob­lem. When a subject enters my blood­stream, I cannot do anything else until it finds a way out,” he says, followed by a self-deprecating laugh.

Laughter has been in short supply in the last few years. The lavishly mounted Thugs of Hindostan (2018) failed at the box office, followed by the rejection of the epic recreation of Forrest Gump, Laal Singh Chaddha. Meant to be an anti colonial satire, Thugs of Hindostan was a laughable misfire. Intended to be a love letter to India, Laal Singh Chaddha became a byword for self indulgence.

His marriage to filmmaker Kiran Rao came undone and Covid-19 forced him to sit at home for six months and do some deep thinking, not necessarily liking the person that he saw he had be­come. He started therapy, something he continues to date, and is feeling lighter, and understanding himself better.

But the test of a person’s character is in how he handles failure. While his ex-wife Kiran’s film, Laapataa Ladies (2023), which he produced, did well criti­cally and commercially, his son Junaid’s first theatrical release Loveyapa (2025) tanked, disappointing him deeply. As he said at that point: “Even my own films’ failures didn’t hurt me so much.” Here Aamir showed his true mettle, main­taining his poise, submitting himself to public scrutiny, acknowledging his parenting oversights, recognising his lifelong obsession with work, and shar­ing his shortcomings as a partner.

The honesty has melted the hardest of hearts. This spirit permeates the film. The ten neuro-divergent co-stars who form the basketball team that his charac­ter Gulshan Arora has to coach as part of community service for drunken driving are transparent, spontaneous and pure in their performances. Chosen from over 2,000 who auditioned, they span the spectrum from Down’s Syndrome to Asperger’s (referred to as Autism Spec­trum Disorder now). “Prasanna made me rehearse separately from them,” says Aamir, “So I met them on the set as co-actors. They had learnt their lines. Even Gopi (Gopi Krishnan Verma who plays Guddu), who speaks just Malyalam, had. They were so capable. And they were so natural and loving. They could laugh at me for flubbing a line and I could scold them for overacting. I realised they don’t need mollycoddling or special handling. They just need what all of us need: respect, love and warmth.”

The result is a film that refuses to feel sorry either for its stars or for their fami­lies, the caregivers, who usually suffer the most. As Gurpal Singh, the actor playing Kartar Singh, who runs the centre says: “Their condition ensures that their fami­lies retain a childlike view of the world.” The champions and their families will get a second shot at stardom when Aamir releases the real story behind each of the ten. That documentary will bring the families firmly out of the shadows where society has placed them and put the spot­light on them. “I was interested in their journey. This is about the 10 sitaare but the real champions are the parents,” he says. “I am going to see the first cut of the film by our young intern Sonu Bakshi and I can’t wait to watch it.”

Parental self-care is a big theme of the movie, with a surprise twist in the story of Gulshan’s mother, the delightful Mum­myji of Lajpat Nagar, Dolly Ahluwalia, an expert at deflating oversized egos and making expressive and self-explanatory gestures.

It is not easy to make a film about love or humanity in this age of rage, or so we are told. It is easier to give in to baser instincts or popular trends. But whether it is Lagaan in 2001, Taare Zameen Par in 2007 or Dangal in 2016, Aamir has always listened to his heart. “None of those stories were obvious, mainstream stories. There was always a risk. But I think when the intention is pure, people understand,” he adds. But is he anything like his character Gulshan Arora in Sitaare Zameen Par, who finally learns to understand his fears and foibles? “My own journey in understanding myself, of who I am through therapy, has been important irrespective of this film. We cannot even begin to compare ourselves with the challenges a neuro-divergent person faces. But all of us have our insecurities, fears and triggers. I feel all of us are on the spectrum. Some obvious, some less so,” he adds.

HE WAS CAREFUL with Sitaare Zameen Par, as he was with its spiritual prequel, Taare Zameen Par. He had paediatrician and parent trainer Dr Nina Vaidya as a special advisor on board to help with the correct terminology, organised test screenings at organisations that have worked with intellectually disabled people for decades, and made appropri­ate changes when needed. The casting director, Tess Joseph, was also sensi­tised about the subject. They needed 10 main actors and about 100 neuro-divergent people for the basketball teams—Aamir’s team enters a bas­ketball tournament and plays against other such teams.

Aamir is going against the tide in the theatrical release of the film too, in an industry wracked by the with­drawal of audiences from cinema halls, partly because of the easy availability of movies on OTT streaming. Aamir’s decision to not release the film on streaming, at least for now, has won praise from the Multiplex Associa­tion of India. It is the kind of leadership the film industry has been waiting for.

All talk of retiring has also been banished now. At 60, despite 37 years as a star carrying the entire burden of the film, perhaps Aamir has found new vigour. There is Rajkumar Hirani’s biopic of legendary filmmaker Dadasaheb Phalke in the works. An­urag Basu is planning another biopic with him of singer Kishore Kumar, while Lokesh Kanagaraj has locked him in for an action thriller in Septem­ber 2026. His home for many years, an apartment block in Mumbai’s Pali Hill, will be torn down and rebuilt again, while he and his family stay close by. It’s a wrench, but much needed as the building is old.

Life is renewed and remade again. There is purpose, promise and passion.

Aamir KhanAutism SpectrumBollywoodcinemaneuro-divergentSitaare Zameen Par