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Home alone and happy: Macaulay Culkin
(Agencies)
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What happens if a child
doesn't want to live with his uncaring, unloving parents? If it's the US, the
child can simply seek a ‘divorce'. Just like
Home
Alone
child star Macaulay Culkin did when
his father started misappropriating his money. Or when a Florida teenager moved
court to be separated from his parents, because they refused to buy him a
Nintendo console! But for many, it's usually lack of love and time from parents
which forces them to take such extreme measures.
‘Divorce' or
emancipation, the legal term under American law, involves seeking a separation
from parents much before the legal age. The parents' consent is a must before
the court declares a child emancipated. The child, then, is responsible for
his/her own welfare but cannot drink, drive or go to a nightclub - all of which
have an age limit.
Hollywood
has mirrored this reality in films like
Irreconciliable
Differences
(1984), where a young girl
(Drew Barrymore) seeks a divorce from her parents and wants to be placed under
the care of another person. And while this may be unheard of in India,
first-time filmmaker M J Ramanan has chosen to make a movie on it as well.
Meri Bhi
Suno
, the story of a boy who wants a
divorce from his busy, inconsiderate parents, is currently awaiting release.
It was a widely reported case
involving an American teenager that first drew the filmmaker's attention to the
issue, but what really convinced him to go ahead was the
‘‘all-pervasiveness'' of the problem. “Most working parents
are not able to devote time to their children. I saw it happening with my
friends and even in my own family. My nieces and nephews felt lonely as their
parents were always busy. Once my sister and brother-in-law even failed to turn
up at their son's annual function at school. The child kept waiting for them all
through the event,” recounts Ramanan.
The malaise is growing in
urban India, and the filmmaker realized this when he met a judge while
researching the film. “He cited various cases, including one in Kolkata
where a custody battle was fought between parents and grandparents - the child
wanted to live with the latter. Everybody knows the problem exists, but they
don't know how to solve it,” he says. The film, he insists, doesn't blame
the parents but tries to present the problem objectively. Ramanan agrees the
idea of ‘emancipation' is alien to Indian ethos. ‘‘But unless
we wake up to the problem, it may become a reality here as well,'' he warns.
meenakshi.kumar@timesgroup.c
om