Creative Talents have Market

Dhrubajyoti Ghosh

Human beings write. In modern times, some of them get specially trained in creative writing. Other than the trained ones, there are intuitively creative writers since antiquity. Writers can also be change-makers particularly in the recent times, and such writers are paid handsomely to come up with moving texts or logos that will change the mindset of a society to buy the branded goods. To become fairer perhaps, or to get an oily skin, or for the child to get taller, or a beggar mother to feed her baby with Pepsi as she knows that is the cheapest nutrition she can organise, a lesson she picked up from the creative advertisement texts all around her. These are the creative writers who make any tangible impact upon this incredible race.

There are also the other kind of thinkers who wrote and still write, many of them sincerely, even honestly. They write to bring social change. Reduce poverty. Establish values of ethics. These writers are downright failures.

The small groups of earthlings who have the ultimate wherewithal with most of the world's capital at their disposal and control the flow of funds comprehensively in the way they think proper, dislike the poor.

From a different camping place, Stalin disliked peasantry, Nehru disliked farmers (he did not generally concede that) and post-colonial development in India rejected the claims of farmers, fishers or the forest dwellers. All this is documented evidence. There have been thousands of good articles/books or news scripts written, published, awards won, new laureates born but nothing impacted the diabolic world order.

In a separate playfield, genuinely smart bipeds are also constantly and creatively active. They are paid fluently to write protest hyperboles. They work like factory workers. These factories are a different kind. They take away the lead from genuine thinkers, activists and researchers and set up ostensible stand-posts of protest. Unobtrusively but cleverly, they diffuse the last traces of social voice against misrule.

Outside these infamous factories, there, are outstanding persons engaged in creative writing, painting and all sorts of art forms. In a sense this is akin to the ‘Goala Syndrome’. Goala in most part of India are milkmen who will deliver milk door to door after milking the cow right in front of you or just nearby. Most milkmen compulsively used to pour plain water and enhance the quantity of milk. To sell the water which was his prime intention, he definitely added milk. Without a portion of whole milk he could not carry on his business of sailing the concoction he called milk. This has been a routine practice through ages for a large part of this very large country. Similarly there are creative persons pouring their best and their presence provides hiding space for the Pepsi promotional text writers.

[ghoshdj.in@gmail.com]

Frontier
Vol. 50, No.11, Sep 17 - 23, 2017