12 year-old Karan’s world is blissful…. a family to nurture him, a good school for learning and a nice circle of friends to play with. His evenings are generally spent playing cricket around a tree with his group of friends namely Ritesh (the baby-faced whiz kid), Laddu (the quintessential fatso, butt of many jokes) and Priya (never refutes a word by Karan).
Karan and his friends are involuntarily pitted against a mean looking beggar living in a small tent hut, outside their housing society. The tales surrounding the mysterious bag of this beggar has earned him nickname Raavan from these kids.
For Ram, the 13 year-old kid of a laborer family and a child-laborer himself at construction site, watching these cricket games is the only bright spot in a day. Under the brutal supervision of the site manager Gupta, Ram is forced to work long hours.
One day, while discussing different types of habitats in class, Karan gets an idea of using the tree in the society compound, as a lookout post for tracking Raavan. Searching for wooden planks to make the tree-house, Karan reaches the construction-site where a quick-thinking Ram saves him from the ire of Gupta. This initiates a deep bond of friendship between Karan and Ram. Ram aspires to be an architect and so readily joins the gang in building the tree house.
The tree house becomes their home away from home, a sanctuary where no one disturbs them but they are shocked on knowing that their arch enemy Raavan has been sleeping in the tree house in the nights. This starts a battle to evacuate the danger-man from their ‘home’. As the cat and mouse game escalates, the kids begin to have an understanding of the problems faced by homeless beggars like Raavan. For Raavan the tree house is the only place he could sleep without fearing a police raid in the night. Even for Ram, the tree house is the only permanent home he has ever known. Thus begins a truce between the beggar and kids.
All is thrown off balance when builder Bakshi and his associate Gupta plan to cut the tree for making an access road. Battle lines are drawn with the kids and Raavan on one side and the money hungry Bakshi and Gupta on the other side.
Will they ever be able to save the TREE and the home atop it from woeful and vile builder? Will they be able to make a TREE important enough for people to start war against builder? Will environment become more important then development? That is “Zor Lagaa Ke Haiya”, a film with a Save TREE message, packaged in enjoyable story telling, that would motivate anybody to preserve the planet earth for future generations.
Releasing May 2009.
