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Yesterday I’m happy. Yes. Yesterday. If you’re wondering why I’ve made a gross grammatical error, let me put an end to your pain. No, that wasn’t an error. It was very much intentional. (Now you’ve either asked why, or you’ve decided that I’m crazy.) Either way, the reason for this intentional ‘ungrammatisation’ is that I intended to write this post yesterday titled “Today I’m Happy.” But as usual the procrastinator won over the blogger, and thus, I end up here, in a uniquely boring General English hour, formulating these thoughts. And this ‘happiness’ was so ‘present’ yesterday that I can’t believe its ‘past’ today. And so the weird title.

Anyway, coming back to yesterday (oh how past and present play such a punning role!) it was a very happy day. To start off with, I attended (and helped organise) a national literature seminar. It was uniquely crafted so as to portray the literature in and through performance. It was so well organised that it might have thrown down the glove against the upper limits as defined by Heisenberg’s equation. It had a wonderful participant:volunteer ratio of about 1:1. The chief guest refused to come for the inauguration, quoting her ‘beauty sleep’. The performances were so intriguing that even the most intellectual professors drift into dreamland. The performers decided to take the whole event in their own hands and took their sweet time with each performance, pushing up the blood pressure levels of several very involved organising professors and students. Literature stood aside and made way for self praise, gossip, and page four discussions.

And yet again coming back to why I’m happy, after the seminar which rendered all of us souls who had actually bothered to work tired to the core, four of us decided to drown our sorrows in the one thing which is instant cure for all problems… Food! (no, not beer….)

So we headed to this chic expensive place, and blew a lot of cash, and had nice food. But what I’m happy for is the fact that I got to meet this truly unique and wonderful person. Lets call her Ms S. I always thought that she was this imposingly intellectual person, who did not have a human side to her. But to my amazement, I found that she had this human side which was more human than many other humans I’ve met. And I was amazed at how well I could gel in with her.

We talked about many a thing under (and over) the sky. Headed for a hot tea. And called it a night.

I’m happy because I met this wonderful person.

End of story.

Thank you.

Its interesting to note how sometimes some things which should ‘flow’ are forced out of you… This post is inspired by the very many hours of ‘creative torture’, and more immediately, by this caricature drawn by one of my friends…

Creative obstructions

So this here refers to one of our uniquely crafted magnum opus classes aimed at expanding our creativity in the writing spectrum. The professor handling this particular class is particularly particular about the various particularities in your writing, and dressing. She happens to be a strict disciplinarian when it comes to the matters of expanding your creative horizons, and wearing informals to college.

What she insists on is that creativity should flow during a couple of predefined hours, from every single student in the class. The variables involved in this so called ‘creativity flow’ are -

1. The student should be present in class (the student will have to be atleast 75% of the time, since attendance counts)
2. Student should be awake

But an adolescent student isn’t that simple! Nor is creativity! The actual variables involved are -

3. The student should be present
4. The student should be awake
5. The student should not be sleepy
6. The student should have had lunch/snacks atleast for the past 1 and a half hours
7. The student should have the least minimum common sense (judged by the ability to distinguish a tree from a cell phone)
8. The student should *know* to write
9. The student should have a pen and paper / laptop

So as you can see, a lot more variables are involved than initially hypothesized. This means that Ms Creativity’s assumption that creativity can flow at will (that too external will) is slightly over-calculated.

I agree that with a deadline, and persistent effort, creative people can come up with creative ideas. You do not have to be all laid back to do something creative. However, trying to extract this level of creativity from overly dumb people, as in people who use trees to type text messages, and cell phones to create a fire, can be described as a futile, if not insane, venture.

Even with her strict disciplinarian codes and aggressive outlooks, some people just cannot be creative on her command (“Be creative NOW!”) because : 1, they’re dumb; and 2, they just don’t want to.

So how right is she in trying to force creativity out of half sleeping, dumb students attending the especially mundane classes of hers. I would describe it as creative torture. Torture in the name of creativity! Oh woe is this world! How its ethics and morals are being destroyed, and used in disgraceful manners! Torture, my dear, Torture, in the name of creativity!