The Naked Truth About Creativity

Creativity is not only about art, music, word jugglery or about producing aesthetic looking articles. Creativity is essentially an ingenious response to life itself and to life's challenges and as such it is possible to identify it in so many different situations which we would not necessarily associate with the term.

I am thinking about Pooja Chauhan for example, whose story, splashed recently across the national newspapers left many of us open mouthed – some with disgust, others (like me) with something like awe and admiration. This twenty two year old woman who had been harassed for several months by her husband and in-laws, had apparently made several attempts to get a police case registered, without success. (For more details read Anouradha Bakshi's post at Desicritics - The Thin Line Between Sanity And Madness) 

Picture the scene. Three years ago you married a man whom you thought you loved and also imagined, loved you. The romance has long since died down. For over five months, your husband and other members of his family have been abusing you as well as your small daughter, physically and mentally because they claim you didn’t bring in enough dowry. You seek justice but nobody takes any interest in your problem, nobody bothers to give you a second glance. Even your attempt to set yourself on fire fails to evoke the necessary attention. Maybe self immolation has become too much of a mundane activity for anyone to bat an eyelid any more in this country.

So one fine day your brain cells flash this ingenious idea at you. You act on it, decide to strip to the bare essentials and proceed to walk through the streets of the very conventional town in which you live, in protest. Although you manage to shock the wits out of hordes of people who see you “flaunting your body”, your goal is almost instantly achieved. In hardly any time, the police swoop down on the man who has been harassing the daylights out of you and lock up his abusive parents as well. Heck, who could fault this gutsy young woman on intelligence and creativity? A whole lot of people I’m afraid. A country full of people in fact, who can stand to see a woman being overworked, beaten, bruised, burnt to death, but can’t stand to see the naked truth of her real place in society.

The responses to Anouradha’s article would have for the most part been hilarious if they didn't make one so sad. Pooja’s story confronts us with an extreme case in which a mind-bogglingly innovative response to a hopeless situation is met with moral indignation rather than the admiration, if not awe it deserves. I just don’t think I would have ever had the nerve to do what Pooja did, had I been in the same situation but wow! I think this is one hell of a woman who deserves both respect and compassion.

It seems to me, that change can take place in a society only when people are able to exercise their intelligence and powers of creativity. Creativity may be born out of curiosity and a sense of joy or it may be born out of desperation as clearly happened in Pooja Chauhan’s case. Whatever its basis, a truly creative spirit requires both, a high level of passion as well as fearlessness to be sustained, which seems to be sadly lacking in our country. Creativity implies something out of the ordinary, something really different, something new and it never is easy to break through old patterns into a new dimension. In an atmosphere where ingenious attempts to resolve problems are curbed and even sought to be punished as in Pooja’s case, something is lost. I would call it the spirit. The very task of fostering an environment of creativity and fearlessness in the face of adversity, is a radical one because ultimately, anyone who tries to do it will be seen as either mad or criminally dangerous. In the process the real criminals will go scot-free.

Uma

Comments

[bvn]

I've always wanted protest in such a unique way, still searching for a reason. Pooja's case is a relief though :)

[Karnail]

Excellent. Excellent indeed. You made me fell thst I am not wasting my time with you.