Andy
and I were having one of those philosophical discussions at office and the
topic converged to nature and creativity.
“Do
you thing nature promotes creativity?” he asked.
Without
thinking, I blurted “Of course it does!”
And
then he asked “How?”
“Good
question”, I said and the doubt did set my thoughts racing.
When
I thought of Nature, all that drifted before my eyes in a cloudy haze was the
open green landscapes, the majestic mountains, sometimes brown and other times
engulfed in white snow, the different shades of green swaying and singing in
the forests, a gurgling blushing river, a serene lake or that roaring waterfall
tearing down the cliff. Before associating nature with creativity, I just
wondered if we really comprehend creativity.
What
IS creativity? The dictionary says – the ability to create. Create! And who
could create better than the Creator himself and what could be His best
creation if not Nature! It’s veritable that nature would definitely inspire and
encourage creativity for the mortals. Coming back to what creativity is to the
sundry rabble, I guess it is seeing and experiencing things from a different
perspective. It is a slight twisting of a paradigm. It is the celebration of
idea generation! It is the painting of the same thing in twenty different ways.
It is thinking out of the box. While a
circle will always remain a circle for some, it can represent a moon for a
dreamy eyed child; it can remind the future state for a balding man. And why
can’t it remind a hungry fatso of a round creamy chocolate cake? Creativity is
making ugly pigs into cute characters, it’s infusing life into the impossible and
it’s colorful and wonderful!
Have you ever seen a caricature
artist filling up a blank paper with his pencil or brush? Every stroke defines
a feature, every curve impregnates an expression, and each stolid scribble breathes
life into the character. The caricature artist takes inspiration from one of nature’s
most humorous creation, a human! A cartoonist takes simple happenings from
everyday life and presents it with a laughable and laudable touch. Cartoonists
like Charles M Schultz brings the innocent and inane lives of children like the
cute Charlie Brown and his friends alive in the comic strip Peanuts while RK
Narayan stealthily gives the common man a bearing on the hectic and mundane
lives of the mass and the class, politicians being the butt of most jokes. Bob
Barnes must have had a difficult marriage for him to know the nuances between
couples so minutely and turn it into an everyday riot. And what about Walt
Disney? Walt Disney got the inspiration for Mickey Mouse from a tame mouse at
his desk at Laugh-O-Gram Studio in Kansas
City, Missouri.
Creativity is about taking natures gifts and presenting them in different
forms, it’s about making mice and ducks speak, making a bear smile or having a
panda learn the art of Kung Fu. Creativity is also thinking aloud things that
you don’t see or have never seen but the inspiration is always etched on the
lines of fact and everyday stories. Creativity made Superman fly, Spiderman
spin a web and hang from towers, it made aliens believable!
From
the number of fiction books that I have read, I have formed the notion that
fiction is more nonfiction than fiction itself! Writers create more from the
incidents happening around them, the characters are people they know or have
met at some point in their life and they exaggerated them to fit their woven
tale. Creativity is telling people through a beautiful writing or a book,
through fictional characters things that they already know but have forgotten
or have got lost in their daily humdrum. It is inspiring a feeling that they
can correlate with. Creativity is inspiring and motivating, it is an art, a
craft, a vision and mission beyond the normal. For creators, normal is boring!
Creativity uses common sense but goes much beyond it.
I
feel creativity is a talent and it is God gifted. Some possess it, others
don’t, simple! At times, it’s gifted in inheritance. You can train yourself but
if the intrinsic trait is missing, then it is futile to try. Can everyone
create the statue of David, virtuoso Michelangelo’s brilliant gift to us; can
everyone create the Taj Mahal if they wanted to, if they practiced their whole
lives, would they be able to compose like the stalwart RD Burman? NO!
Creativity is nature’s gift to a selected few and the purpose is to glorify
nature in turn. But creativity is not only about creating; it’s also about
appreciating and understanding creativity. How many people have the ability of
reading between the lines and understanding the humor in a Peanuts joke, would
it not be an insult if you walked past the Taj Mahal and not give it a second
look? If you feel the need to explain a joke, the essence is lost!
There
are various theories defining the creative trait of individuals like the left brain
and right brain theory, lateral thinking etc. but each has
conflicting themes. Whether to believe and how much to believe is a dilemma.
Does
pressure bring out creativity? You bet, considering
that the great ad maker Piyush Pandey, when asked where and when he gets most
of his ideas from, he gleefully replied “On the toilet seat”. Under pressure!
Jokes apart, pressure can sometimes enhance creativity, and at other times
spoil it. The musical virtuoso AR Rahman seemed to have suggested the great
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to not get into movies so that he doesn't lose his niche
of soulful creations and get bent by directors and others.
For the
artistically and creatively inclined, nature is the biggest resource.
The
simplest of nuances can trigger a creative spurt in someone. Gulzar
saab identifies the sorrow hidden in a beautiful smile I his lyrics “Tum itna
jo muskura rahe ho, kya gum hai jisko chupa rahe ho”. Like a child, he aspires
to capture the moon in the lyrics of Kamine “Kabhi zindagi se maanga, pinjre
mein chaand la do, Kabhi laanten deke, kaha aasmaa pe taango”. If there is one
lyricist in my mind who understands, breathes, details, analogizes, accentuates,
celebrates nature and worships it, it has to be Gulzaar saab. Most writers
disappear into solitude, in the quietest of places, in scenic places to bring out their
creative
vibes. Creativity, at most times, is like stitching a
quilt. What you have experienced and observed at different places, things that
have been narrated by others; it’s about having the ability of remembering,
relating and sewing the together to drive home your message. Man himself
is the greatest product of nature. The feelings
that are emitted, felt; they themselves are carriers of creativity.
Ideas
may not necessarily come when you think hard or are deliberately and
desperately looking out for one; they,
at times appear out of nowhere. It’s all about recognizing them when they come.
There
is no mantra for creativity. When I was there
at the peak of Tungnath with waves of differently
colored mountains ahead of me, the tranquility of
the place caused heaviness in my heart. Such
stupendous and mesmerizing beauty! The rambling crowd in my head managed to go into a stolid silence.
The
feeling was one of tears being churned due to a lot of happiness;
for once the heart took precedence over the head. This was a
perfect setting for a poetic brilliance or maybe the beginning of a sad story.
Humor would be a wrong thing to initiate in such an environment. If you had to
write something spooky, staying alone in the forest would definitely help.
Sitting
by a lake or a river on a moonlit night with the reflection waving in the water
definitely brings out a romantic feeling as you remember your first
affair or the lost innocence of childhood.
Well,
the inference – nature most definitely promotes creativity! If you are not
inspired by the rain droplets, by the changing colors of the skies, by the
rising and the setting sun, by the romantic roundness of the moon, by the
jubilant colors all around you, by the sundry shapes
of drifting clouds, by a shy deer
or the clever stripes on a royal Bengal tiger, by
the plethora of hues on a butterfly; then you are definitely
missing something in life and creativity for you is a distant affair! I guess
this old beautiful hindi song says it all!
Hari hari vasundhara pe, neela
neela ye gagan
ki jiske baadlon ki paalki, uda raha pawan
dishaye dekho rang bhari, chamak
rahi umang bhari
ye kisne phhol phool pe, kiya singaar hai
ye kaun chitrakaar hai, ye kaun chitrakaar
tapaswiyon si hain atal, ye parvaton ki chotiyaan
ye sarp si ghumerdaar, gherdaar ghaatiyan
dhwaja se ye khade huye, hain vriksh devdaar ke,
galeeche ye ghulab ke, bageeche ye bahaar ke,
ye kis kavi ki kalpana ka chamatkaar hai
ye kaun chitrakaar hai, ye kaun chitrakaar
kudrat ki is pavitra ko, tum nihaar lo
iske guno ko apne man me, tum utaar lo
chamka lo aaj laalima, apne lalaat ki
kan kan se jhaankti, tumhe chavi viraat ki
apni to aankh ek hai, uski hazaar hai
ye kaun chitrakaar hai, ye kaun chitrakaar
Song- Ye kaun chitrakaar
hai ( boond jo ban gayi moti) ( 1967) Singer-Mukesh, Lyrics-Bharat
Vyas, MD-Satish Bhatia
