What is creativity?

In the recent times I have seen 3 movies that made me think about the question! what is creativity. The movies I am talking about are Wake up sid, Rock on, Three Idiots. The media and movies have created an image that a creative person is one who has very long curls,(trying to copy einstien) has a rugged look with a rustic beard, or a frenchie, wears odd looking spectacles, is either a painter, sculptor, dancer, stylist or a movie director, keeps blabbering sense on every issue etc etc. For example the protagonist sid in the movie hates wearing formals, thinks that going to his dad's office which is into the production of bathroom accessories is very boring and not even worth a BMW. So he ends up as a photographer enjoying the sceneries and works with a bunch of "different" people who publish a very high class time pass magazine with rich photographs in it. They do all this for me to say that - "yes this useless fellow is very sensitive and creative". So his father played by brilliant Anupam kher is a big fat loser who zipped his creative serum only to build what? A useless boring business empire. Come on give a break.

And in Rock on our hero whose life is made redundant by a fat paying investment banker job rediscovers himself by taking up his passion! Music. That lets him trigger the his brain and look people as people. And he understands his supportive wife prachi only when he was "CREATIVE". In 3 Idiots, our wangudu/rancho is termed very creative. Finally an engineer has come in that category :), but after what? 400 PATENTS!. My question is how do you quantify a person as creative? Say I am writing this parody on some of the cult classic movies. I am basically a engineer who s still studying. Mind you for the creative geniuses engineering is one of the most boring things to do. How can I be creative? or am I creative? Will people just about include me in that list as I vent out my creative vacuum in this blog? Load of bullshit.

Creativity raises out of how we think. This lists out the characteristics of the creative person. So my question is can a common man with limited skill set clouded by lust and materialistic needs be creative? Yes ofcourse. We can be creative in every walk of life. Creativity is the bringing into being of something which did not exist before, either as a product, a process or a thought.In fact, we are all creative every day because we are constantly changing the ideas which we hold about the world about us. Creativity does not have to be about developing something new to the world, it is more to do with developing something new to ourselves. When we change ourselves, the world changes with us, both in the way that the world is affected by our changed actions and in the changed way that we experience the world.
Our mind is a canvass that is never ending. Use it to make your day today happenings interesting. If you are creative, do something different, however minuscule it is, you have a sense of satisfaction that cannot be put in words. Like solving a sudoku, use a small innovation to reduce ur mom's work in kitchen, making a person laugh in the most dolorous of situations and many more small things.But doing that you will never come in this list . But who cares? We have sated our hunger for innovation. thats it.
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Our life in earth is very special. We have a brilliant processing unit inside our skull that works non stop. So don't worry if you are not as brilliant as rancho, cant understand physics as good as Einstien, as eloquent as Obama, free spirit like Richard Branson, suck @painting, no so good vocabulary, you dont look as stunning as ash or hrithik, still we can be as creative as da vinci in our own way. Only down side is others cant realize that. But who the heck cares? Our "mona lisa" is totally different from his!

The girth of Education!

The expectation of every human being is to be successful. From a very young age, we (at least the indian students) are nurtured to become successful picking up a profession that s widely regarded and gives fast track success. So what is education really for? To get a job with a fat pay? I wont be a saint and say no. To a certain extent the answer is yes. I have njoyed being a student for the last 18 years with zero responsibility. We are in a materialistic world and in this modern world we need to sell ourselves. So going into a school/college are we really educated?

Education is a life long process. You keep learning new things every second. The schooling and college education helps us to streamline ourselves to keep the learning process going till we perish. As a novice, a raw diamond we enter school. Its one of the most beautiful and essential part of the development of ones' personality. Every time I cross the road I still remember the lessons that I learnt in my II Std. "Look to your right, then left and again to your right, make sure there are no vehicles and then cross the road". Also you get you learn most of your social sense there. All the subjects equally equip you to become a strong individual. I have had fascinating debates with my friends about the why we are studying history or civics. I agree that we want only science and math for getting into a good college and subsequently to get a good job if you take science stream. (I am specifically ignoring other streams because most of the people want engineering/medicine. For others you surely need history and civics. So I am taking about science/math stream people.) Wihout knowing basics like Habeus Corpus, one cannot be a socially conscious person. Knowledge is wealth and we should never limit ourselves.

Next I come to the important point of MARKS, the nemesis for most of us leaving a small percentage of toppers. The number game that is as important as salt is to the food. Our percentages in 10th, 12th and college act as a stepping stone to our success. That dosent mean that those who score less will have a dearth of opportunities. It is just a measure of how you thrive in a system. How you respond to a particular type of competitive framework. Many just use this to do a basic profiling on you. Rather it helps in creating a good first impression. Again the first step in education is to understand that every person in this world is unique and will thrive in a particular environment. When we educate ourselves to be versatile in multitude of challenging situations we become successful. Again Let us not become philosophical and say success varies from person to person and it depends on how they understand that. I am talking about an ordinary common man and not about extraordinaries. And if some one says he is not behind success (other than kung suk wangudu) he is either insane or has a huge ancestral wealth that he is unable to burn out.

Education is much more than the technical prowess that we attain. It helps us change the outlook towards life. It helps us understand our strengths and not to rood over our weaknesses. A truly educated man is fearless, humble, sees both success and failure in the same light, earns respect of friends and foes alike, respects other people, and many more awesome virtues. So nobody is truely learned. Perhaps Lord Ram from the mythology is an example. So do we really get such virtues by going through the grueling process of the indian education system? We have some brilliant colleges, some of the best schools in the world, still our litracy level is not inversely proportional to the crime rate or to put it in a better way the summation of not so good things happening in the society. Education has failed to eradicate superstitions, social evils etc, etc. Educated people hardly come for voting. And a fresh graduate is not ready for anything but attend some company's training.

So other than helping us get fat pays and to a certain extent meaning less degrees, education should help us face all the tricky situations with a stoic mind. As william Durant says

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

So let us strive continuously to learn, use what ever education system we have to improve our personality. After all things in the pages of real life is more important and teach us more than the knowledge in the books.