Exploring Creativity

Why did we think that to write Stories, Poetry and Features would be an exercise in creativity?

Well, aren't they? Here, let us pause and think for a moment – what is a creative effort?

To be creative is to be clever! Clever with your ideas, clever with how you use these ideas, and perhaps, crafty with how you present these ideas!

No two people can have the same ideas and present them in the same manner unless they are indoctrinated, drilled, schooled or channelised into similar ways of responding to any given situation.

When the mind is not strait jacketed, it roams freely – sometimes too freely! But it is this ‘freedom to think’ that brings forth a truly creative, individualised or imaginative response.

To minds which had indeed been strait-jacketed for the better part of ten scholastic years, we wanted to give free rein. To minds that had only reproduced lessons, recreated theorems, repeated words ‘parrot-like’, learnt tables and spellings by rote, recalled formulae and regurgitated dates and figures, we wanted to say –

‘Come let us take a little walk.… roam freely, loosen up!’ – and then, when the mind is thus left to wonder, it would begin to see things differently, imageries, fantasies even – and maybe, move back and forth through ideas, creating worlds that would be interesting to explore, explaining worlds that were interesting to create.…

The movement back to reality leaves a little minty coolth in the mind, and one just smiles at the joy of remembrance!