Tahaan, directed by Santosh Sivan is a heart warming tale of a young boy named Tahaan and his faithful friend, a donkey, named Birbal. The movie truly depicts the environment of rural Kashmir, where shooting bullets and dead bodies are a routine.

One specific scene which will truly touch your heart is, when Tahaan goes out to the search Birbal and encounters a group of children playing “Chor-Police”. Half of them are militants and rest half the army. This scene truly depicts the irony, horror and unending tragedy of the paradise lost-Kashmir.

The director has provided an insight to a childhood of a young boy that is filled with grief and tears. Tahhan’s father is picked up by the police for questioning and since then could never return.

His mother prays and cries for her husband to return but to no avail. Finally when their financial conditions worsen, she has to sell birbal, a donkey which is the only friend of her young son. Tahaan is determined to get his friend back, and in the search he is lost and lands up in a dark street, all alone with a grenade in his hand.

Talking about the performance, the two children in the movie, Purav Bhandre and Dheirya Sonecha, have done a marvelous job, and have shown a fine display of their emotions and innocence. Sarika, Anupam Kher, Victor Banerjee, Rahul Bose, too have done justice to their respective roles.

The locales of rural Kashmir are good, and the first half of the movie is quite slow. Thought he narrative lacks clarity, the movie is till good enough to be watched once, still the movie seems to be a tribute to the heaven on earth-Kashmir.