The curse of the uncreative

The argument, needless like most, comes up every now and then - Is
creativity an exalted kingdom very few people can be in? Or can it be
taught? We Indians are often anxious about what we are capable of,
and usually fancy ourselves more than we are really capable of. For
most part, India isn't a very creative country. It isn't known for
producing creative people, and we do everything possible to maintain
that proud tradition. We're not talking about the arts or cinema,
design of public spaces or architectural grandeur. We're talking
about how hard we find it to simply avoid clutter. The lazy amongst
us will call it Kitsch, but this isn't that. It is our u n c r e a t i v i t y.

Our children grow up under an attack of noise, messages, morals,
information, rules, and competition. How can we expect them to get
creative with anything, when they don't have space even to breathe and
perceive anything for themselves? Look at the hoardings vying for
space just outside the Cantonment Railway station in Bangalore. In
the thirty seconds or less that anybody spends there, about twenty
nine are going to be spent looking for an autorickshaw or taxi. Right
there - no less than thirty five hoardings clogging all visual space!
Maybe we think it is better to have noise than have nothing at all.

For some reason, we seem to mistake "cute" for "creative". Little
children dancing, flying kites, and singing - "Always, G for H,
Goldwinner for health!" -to advertise the goodness of gingely oil from
Kaaleeswari? What's the logic here? We like children, so we'll throw
a few kids' faces on the screen. Then we'll have them jump around to
show how healthy they are and how much fun they are having. Then we
will show a packet of Gold Winner Gingely oil, so people will run out
and buy this shit so that their children can be like these kids on TV?
A kid recommending a bar of chocolate, sure, but how retarded do we
have to be to listen to a kid telling us about cooking oil? Sorry,
that's not creative. It gets downright ugly when Pothy's tries to
sell clothes with kids doing weird things, while we're attacked by the
words - Jackson! Attack! Betty! Repeat! - Pothys! What the fuck!

It isn't doing something "different" either that defines creativity.
Here is a "different" approach gone horribly wrong, on this TV program
called "Life's Like That".

Why are there people sitting at those
tables in the background? Is there any motivation for that? And why
do we have this horribly uncreative shot where one of those background
fools, (on a long lens, with the same screen size as the subject), is
looking straight into the camera?

This isn't just distracting, and for heavens sake, this is not style. It is rank unprofessionalism in
a profession that demands some basic understanding of craft if not
outright creativity. This has to be one more manifestation of the
distinctly Indian u n c r e a t i v e.

Creativity finds solutions, often to mediocrity. That's the reason we
hate creativity! It demands that we move away from our rank
mediocrity in everything we do as India. We are a bungling, fumbling,
confused, overrated, underworked and noisy collective that can't get
its shit together in anything we do collectively. That is why we have
a disconnect between ambition and achievement. It wouldn't hurt to
wonder why there isn't much clutter around the greatest cities in the
world - the ones that people flock to see once in their lives. It
wouldn't hurt to humbly submit that we don't have a clue what we are
doing when we are required to use our imagination.

We have been brainwashed to serve well as slaves. From our education
system where students and institutions and employers bow to marks, to
our political system where everyone bows to the Neta or to money, we
have lost it. And we're not going to turn this around, either. It is
torture, to be living amongst millions of uncreative souls, who do
nothing interesting. It is a curse, and some of us will be lucky to
escape from it.

When a Xylo ad. shows up in the middle of an MGR film on KTV, where
his character espouses the greatness of our culture, model Indian
female behaviour and all the pretentious nonsense of our "culture",
how many people would rush out to buy a Xylo after seeing one very gay
looking metrosexual male hanging out with four designer models inside
one, asking us to have "the time of our lives"? All this on a very
Tamil channel called KTV, being watched by traditional Tamil women?
Please. Someone needs to have their head examined for blowing
Mahindra's advertising budget like this.

Creativity is about learning things from various disciplines, using
knowledge from various sources, and knowing how to apply all of this
towards a cohesive solution. We've seen how bad Doordarshan's
coverage of cricket matches was, and how Channel 9 showed us it should
be done. This has nothing to do with budgets and number of cameras
either. DD is still pathetic because it still doesn't have staff
members that know WTF the art of live sports coverage is about!

The very fact that some people believe they can learn to be creative
means they are too late. Truthfully, it doesn't matter. If you
aren't creative, you don't have to find a job that requires
creativity. No need to worry, for the work that gets outsourced to
India is never likely to ask for our creativity. Isn't that what it
all comes down to?

Sadly, and quite clearly, it appears you CAN find a job that requires
creativity while you can still supply none! A lack of athletic
ability can measurably set you back in the world of sports, and in
plain sight it is not hard to see we don't have a Michael Jordan in
India. Lack of creativity also sets you way back as a productive
community. Creativity is not just about beauty. It is about elegance
and efficiency. It is about implementation that works, communication
that is clear, and an experience that is interesting and never
confusing. It is about a mindset that tries a few different ways of
doing things, with clear motivations for each. It is an attitude, and
it demands clarity in the collective.