Does Nature promote creativity?

          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