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.

A call to entertain

The quintessential purpose of an entertainer is to entertain, which means, we love being around that person, we enjoy the actions and words, and are willing to forget ourselves when the show is on.

Great entertainers have a quality, no matter what their medium - emotional connect with audiences. No surprise at all here that almost every great entertainer has grown up with and in the midst of a lot of organic, unexplained chaos, disappointment, dysfunctionality, and the ability to pick oneself up after each blow.

To those that know, life is a comedy, and to those yet to figure it out, it is a tragedy. Nothing could ring truer in the case of entertainers. No technique, no training, no structure, no practice and no teacher can substitute for life experience and the entertainer who has had a vast variety of life experiences will invariably hold greater interest for audiences than one who hasn't.

The entertainer, whether it be a stand up comedian, an actor, a musician, a director, or the host of a television show, does not choose to impress as much as connect. It's empathy, a global understanding of the human race, our condition, and an observation usually quite acute as is unique and unafraid. It can be very unsettling for a few people who lead guarded lives to be confronted by such an individual. So be it, so be it!

There are two distinct worlds - that of the entertainers and that of worker ants. The world of entertainers is inherently uncertain yet full of promise, throbbing with energy that mostly won't yield measurable or desirable results. The world of the worker ant doesn't hold much by way of promise but calls for diligence over brilliance. It guarantees three square meals and the occasional banquet for those who care to save up.

The world of entertainers works very hard to understand the world of worker ants, for it is the worker ants that feed the box office. Entertainers are used to hearing NO a whole lot more for their efforts than any worker ant can imagine. But, they cannot afford to drop face or appear negative, for the value of their positive energy sometimes is the only selling point. If an entertainer loses his penchant for risk, he automatically becomes a boring worker ant.

No worker ant can aspire to be an entertainer. A flashy worker ant might imagine so, but there is nothing more pathetic to watch than a worker ant trying to become what he is not. He simply doesn't understand how to let go of all things secure and nice, including, yes, those three square meals. The entertainer does not work for those three square meals. He works for appreciation, adulation, applause, and the ascent to greatness in art, but most of all, just acceptance. It's very hard to be accepted when you're trying to entertain, but then, that's why entertainers are special!

Slowly, but surely, the worker ants have got around to subscribing to and then spreading the perception that one can work towards being an entertainer, through training, through practice and the most insulting of all, through process! There is nothing more amusing to an entertainer than to meet a worker ant who asks him about the process he underwent. But the worker ant can never emulate the life of an entertainer. He just doesn't get it.

But the worker ants haven't given up - they have started businesses that teach the craft of entertaining, of acting, of writing, of looking good, of presenting yourself well, and indeed, of managing your professional life. None of them are however, honest enough to tell you that if you aren't inherently an entertainer, you will probably bore others to death. They won't tell you that the quintessential entertainer's quality of taking maximum risk involves going hungry if you have to, spending the last ounce of energy in one more performance, one more shot at lady luck!

They will systematically destroy your charisma, make you conform, and make you do things unnatural to you, your being, your soul, your system, your mind and body. When you go insane, they will blame you for not being able to take it. But alas, if you are stupid enough to let a worker ant tell you how to be an entertainer, you are insane already! Worker ants find security in effort, a warmth in sweat. Entertainers put in their hard work, but that is not the goal. It is finding that streak of inspiration that will make their work truly special, a standout, and give them that push ahead, into the rarefied atmosphere of greatness captured.

Don't ever let a worker ant fill up the blanks, and there will be many, with talks of diligence and discipline and due respect for tradition. Break all the rules, you rowdy entertainer, and that is what all of us want! All of us want to see you reach for the stars even if you are going to fall. The essential quality of the hero is not preparing for the leap into the unknown, but actually leaping when faced with the unknown. That is what we want from our entertainers, not dogged marches to insignificant victories over trivial obstacles.

If there is one thing that still hangs in commonality between the truly great entertainers of the bygone eras and those of today, it is individual charisma. But, there are fewer and fewer free spirited expressions in the business of entertainment than there used to be. The age of innocence is gone, and the age of over managed delirium is here. The inability to entertain has spawned several new uncreative "captivities" in lieu of engaging entertainment.

We don't need reality shows, we don't need "Moments of truth", and stupid, uninteresting people selling their souls on camera to voyeuristic audiences who're getting the fake deal and loving unprotected rape. We don't need the torture of watching worker ants imagining they are entertainers. We want purity of heart, we want to laugh our guts off, we want to cry unabashedly, and we want to be emotionally drained and then lifted.

We want to hear truths about us that we hate but have to accept. We want to see the world from your eyes for ours haven't seen that much. We want to be reminded that there is a life outside of our petty concerns, and that no matter how much we achieve, there is someone who has achieved more, and no matter how we have fallen, there's someone who's fallen harder.

Only real entertainers can lead us to the planes of joy, of promise, of hope, and of clarity. If you have set your heart on being an entertainer, don't listen to reason, and don't ever listen to worker ants telling you what to do. They just don't know. Use your intellect, but only to inform your actions, not to dictate them. Leap and we will leap with you. Even if you perish, you will rise again. If you hold back you have already perished.

Entertain us, please.