celeberate: Celebrate deviations from the original

One of the tenets on which both innovation and evolution stand is that of mutability, or change. Embedded in this trait is the willingness to seek, and even celebrate, reinterpretations. Not all tweaks, of course, will make for pleasant or popular results. But this willingness to seek out adaptation has to be part and parcel of an innovative, creative society. By and large, Indian society is antithetical to any shift from the rulebook. Its obsession with the purity of the ‘original‘ and the ‘authentic’ nails creativity down. We have seen not one ‘creative interpretation’ pass without a bunch crying ‘Blasphemy’!

This is like people crying ‘Sacrilege!’ when, say, they find Christopher Nolan’s Batman not sharing the same qualities as artist Bob Kane’s original caped crusader. The latest interpretation of Ravan in Om Raut’s mythological superhero film, Adipurush, faces the same storm of criticism.

This inability to expand one’s reading of a text – whether the text be film, literature or art – is, strangely, not replicated in music. Remakes of old songs may or may not become hits. But hardly anyone goes frothing in their mouths when Laila O Laila in Qurbani is recreated as Laila Main Laila in Raees. For India to be truly innovative, it has to embrace deviations from originals, not baulk at them – and just wish itself into being creative.