Instilling Creativity

Response to http://beta.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/article74733.ece

Why have art and literature lost its importance is a question whose answer is known to everyone. It is the profit driven market economy, a socio-economic system in which the value of person is calculated on the basis of what one has and not what one is. The wealthier one is the better he/she is. The more luxurious one is the greater he/she is. Courses in the art stream are not as financially rewarding as the courses in commerce and science streams for obvious reasons.
The mechanical repetition of what one studied in commerce and science streams can fetch him/her a salary sufficient to run a middle class family. But in arts and literature one needs to be creative at every point of his/her work. Unfortunately, our educational system does not improve the creativity of the students and hence the art and literature students are at loss, unable to find a job to make their livelihood.
Removal of Chaucer’s Prologue or Nun’s Tale and inclusion of report writing and proposal writing, as the author suggests, is not a solution for the problem. Teaching of neither report writing nor proposal writing will develop the creativity of the students. Study of literature alone will develop it. The major problem is not in the content of teaching but in the method of teaching and evaluation. In our classrooms what happens is only the transfer of information from teachers or lecturers to the students and our exams are just memory tests.
Therefore, developing of a teaching methodology and evaluation system that develops and tests the creativity of students will definitely solve the problem to a great extent.

The Natural Counsellor

Waves roar and groan in the sea of miseries
Where my life sinks and floats
Sometimes, for a breath, I long in the deep
Something then pushes me up and then pulls me down

Waves are mild and slow on this Friday eve
They come and dab the sandy shore
Sooth the aching minds of thousand men
Sitting on the Male’ shore, gazing at the mysteries (miseries) deep

Arnold “saw a note of eternal sadness” in the rising waves
They, but, wipe my grieves away and heals my ailing heart.

Ships swaying in the seamless waves,
Boats dancing in the ocean drifts,
Launches* scudding across,
Planes gliding down.
Cures; it cures,
Oh! Lord.

*Speed Boats

These are few lines jotted on 5 February 2010 sitting at the Artificial beach of Male’, Maldives. I came and sat there to get relieved from the tensions of life; to enjoy a comforting pat of the gentle breeze; to get my agonies washed away by the rising waves. My tension for the day is accommodation.