Anurag Basu, a filmmaker, believed it was his obligation to tell stories about autism to increase public understanding of the disorder. In fact, he felt Barfi! did not give it enough credit, so he promised to go into more detail about it in one of his next projects.
Discussing his movie Barfi!, Basu spoke to Hindustan Times, “When it comes to the story of Barfi!, the story came out when I started working closely with some NGOs. Through my association with the NGOs, I started meeting autistic people and doing events with kids. It was during that period when I started understanding it.”
He further added, “The way they see the world, I tried to see the world through their eyes. It is difficult to see that world, but it is the most beautiful and pure world. That is what prompted me to write the story. Today, the film, with Priyanka Chopra and Ranbir Kapoor, is known as a love story and is liked by everybody. But we couldn’t go deep in the subject. There was a huge spectrum which could have been covered, but couldn’t because of reasons such as commercial angle. We tried our best, but other people have done better.”
He promised to look into the situation once more, saying, “I will do it in the next couple of years. And this time, I will delve deep into it. I will do it. There is a project in mind, and I want to work on it. I will talk about it once closer to time when I am starting to work on it.”
In fact, he encourages individuals to do so on World Autism Awareness Day (April 2) to increase awareness of the problem. “I don’t like when people look at autistic people as bechara. It is not the truth. They are not different. We need to understand it. We can do a lot more. For instance, there are not enough trained teachers for them. They need the same amount of attention from us and the government. We need to understand that every autistic kid is different so that will be the way to learn.
They go for visually learning”, he added. He concluded by saying that “I have formed this personal bond with the issue over the years. There is no single reason or single person for it”.
