In quest of krrrrreeeeeeativiti

There I am, actually having brought abt myself to write the most 'murdered' term in marketing / management/ etc etc... 'Creativity'.... (forgive the attempts to decorate the word - er..just trying to be creative)

I think the first time I heard abt it is from our school drawing teacher.., when he was talking abt my brother - my brother had (and still has!) this uncanny ability to actually write every alphabet in such a way that it resembled the third consecutive alphabet rather than looking like itself... i.e, his As looked like Ds and his Ps looked like Ss and so on - dont ask me how he managed it ... he was also good at making numbers look like alphabets too - to the extent that his maths teacher gave his answer sheet to english teacher, thinking it was his english answer paper ... I can go on , but I shall only digress from the attempted subject of this post...

so this wonderful bhaiya of mine for all his twisted way of holding his pencil was good (in fact sooo good) at one thing - drawing - never mind that it was the same hut and an M with a sun in the centre. So inspired by it he was that anything and everything in our house to my book covers and sometimes even in my clothes there was this ubiquitous M and a sun and a hut - and one day in his 1st standard he was graduated to drawing sir, from ayammas, who gleefully adopted him and told anyone who could listen that he is sooo 'creative'...(it is another thing that his creativity went to the extent of drawing a boy peeing against a plant on a topic called 'water conservation!!'- again, thats a post for another day!!!)

And there I was younger to him by a year and hence always welcomed in firstday in class by teachers with lurvly pinches and 'affectionate' scale beatings 'oh...you are thaaat yoga's sister', and apart from the art of writing like him, one more thing I so couldnt be good at was this damned 'creativity' - everytime in a drawing class, I could not move beyond drawing two circles with a tail and convincing the drawing teacher (poor man- he expected another creative genius from the khandan...) that it was a' kitten'...I mastered it till my 5th standard...but always feeling jealous & inadequate that I cant be 'creative...'

All this was till I heard abt 'crafting class' - where I assumed this natural leadership in the class, thanks to the fact that the crafts teacher was my mom's friend - that was when the early signs of my leadership skills (Ahem!) were showing - authoritarian was my style - just when I figured someone was good at making a flowerpot, I will pour glue on it...heh heh! but two dozen matchboxes (empty matchbox houses), 20000 matchsticks ( matchstick cat, matchstick cage etc etc), and a lot of coloured papers and scissor mark on hands later, I realised that all I could manage was to take off the glue stuck in my hand artfully in the end of the class, and manage to pour half of the glue into the 'craft item'- either mine or the best one in class's !

Worried, my mom decided to take on the mantle and started teaching embroidery for me to make me a 'sophisticated bahu' types - she was sooo enamoured by the picture of women knitting baby sweaters...wanted me to become that..! I graduated from scissors marks to needle marks - and learnt to stitch buttons (a bad attempt at some kind of stitch, in which the needle got stuck in the middle - till date thats how I sew buttons ;-)

by then I was in my 8th standard, and My mom gave up - she learnt to be content with my debating (a.k.a) fighting skills...
(Till one day she was summoned by my science teacher..who showed her a very original and creative piece from me - being asked to write 5 facts about Fish, I had written a full story about matsyavadhar - the poor teacher was zapped to say the least - I was sent with warnings of 'science is not story telling' - but by then I had discovered the delirious joy of faffing ..the effects of which showed 8 years down the lane...)

Circa 2001- Ms. CEO types was my ambition and I applied to any B-school that was worth its name --- Somehow in the bunch of applications, a school called MICA was also part of -- by then I didnt give any thought of it - back-up for IIM is what the arrogant me thought...! When calls started pouring in, MICA was very much there and everyone started raving abt what a bloody brilliant creative place it is (relatives have a knack of making bad places sound like wonderful; places and vice versa -talk abt hidden motives!)- my long forgotten attempt to romanticize with creativity notwithstanding I was looking forward to MET - where they supposedly tested one's 'Creative' skills...

You can imagine the joy I had (and the shock My parents had!) When I actually got thru the best advertising school in the country --- creativity - here I come...!! So there I went in search of this absolutely intriguing 'creative skills'.... And at the end of two years, I was still searching...I was only told that 'creativity and appreciating creativity' can never be taught....

But the quest didnt end, telling myself that vanquishing the myth of creativity is my real burning passion - I went to a mad agency - where creative by definition were people with ponytail, who said juicy marathi ghali's even in client meetings...and purely psyched at the sight of them, client would say - 'oooh he is really creative' (nahi to mar lega bechare ko!) - the creative myth manifested itself in my head as a melenge of purple haircolour + earstud + wierd flea market costumes + bloody good ability at native ghali's (With no exception I noticed that the amount of dirty ghali's u know was directly correlated to your ability to understand India and its people!!)

Thats when I think I gave up - I mean so this damn thing is all abt being a freak and always in a daze thanks to the amt u smoke (in fact the more smoke ard you - the more ideating person you were perceived to be....!) disillusioned, I ran away from advertising and took solace in a bank (which is where I am till date..)

Two days back - someone at work told me that I am creative....little does he know that it made me wonder whether I am looking odd/ out of place...;-)

but seriously..what IS creativity?? the ability to think same things differently (bloody good articulation aka faff), the ability to see things which dont exist (delusion) or the good old knack of coming up with ideas (pleagurisation so sophisticated that ppl think its your idea!)

Somebody tell me pleez..!