Amoeba in the creative juice

Here is the catch with working creatively in an office – you don’t get to do it alone. There is a team and there are meetings and there are brainstorming sessions, which are as effective as shouting into a papier-mâché cave. Then you have to listen to other people’s ideas, which is such a bore. I am always reminded of this line in ‘Lady Windermere’s Fan’: People are not moral or immoral; they are interesting or they are tedious. Ditto with ideas – there are no good ideas or bad ideas – only those that make me sit up straight or the ones that get me further irritated with Kay Kay Menon. Someday, I will make a movie. I will offer Mr. Menon a role. The role will have substance and shades and what’s more, a spine. Someday, in some film – maybe mine, Kay Kay Menon will prove to be worthy of the woman he is in love with. (No prizes for guessing I saw Corporate. So, Kay Kay ditched Chittrangada in ‘Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi’ to go to London. He comes from London in ‘Corporate’ to be the gentle nudge off the cliff for Bipasha Basu.)

To get back to why only some people should be allowed to express their ideas and the others should dedicate their lives to finding out bus fares in Aurangabad. Well, it is not an idea simply because it popped up in your head. That thing that you mistook for a node of intellectual rush could be a nervous tic. It could be a hormonal aberration. It could be you realizing , ‘Hey! If I squint like this and try to write with my teeth, something happens! I fail miserably!’ If you are a man and wear strange looking t-shirts (namely turmeric yellow and V-neck), you qualify. If you are a woman and find such men cute, you qualify.

Also, I find other people’s ideas tedious. I find their analysis of my ideas tedious. I find my own analysis about their ideas tedious. They are boring. I am boring with them. Again, to bring in Oscar Wilde: ‘Why must I be blessed with such contemporaries?’

Why must people meet to discuss an idea? Why does there have to be a populist circus to get creative? There are these huge conference rooms and projectors where asinine, half-thought fragments get bulleted on PowerPoint and get displayed. Not only is it stupid - it is stupid and big and for all to see.

Instead of having conference rooms for holding large meetings, it’s better to have one where you go to be left alone. You talk to yourself.

‘Mukta, do you think we could have multiple branching in this scenario – you know, get three people talking, instead of one?’

‘No Mukta, that wouldn’t be a good idea because one of them is dead.’

‘That is right, Mukta. But then isn’t death a relative term?’

‘No Mukta. While you are otherwise profound and wise, you are now talking like a stupid tadpole. Death is not relative. You are dead because you are dead and therefore you are dead.’

‘Okay Mukta, while you are otherwise polite and courteous, you speak like a bat with nappy rash. It was only an idea.’

‘You know ‘idea’ and ‘idiot’ come from the same source, namely ‘id’ – meaning..umm..the part of the psyche that got famous.’

Mukta and Mukta think over this carefully.

THAT is how smart people get ideas.