“Give us something and we’ll make it worse.” Those were (roughly) the words of a talented singer a few years ago whose voice is the only thing I like about him. Despite my reservations, his simple statement was so succinctly accurate and undeniably profound that I thought it should be on a plaque somewhere. He was referring to a popular show on which he was a judge. (But he might as well have said, “Give us something and we’ll make it worse”) anythingand we make it worse.”) It was the Indian edition of a long-running international show, “repurposed” for this unique beast we lovingly call “Indian taste”. One of his criticisms, our country being our old country, was that the judges had to perform from time to time. Because, you know, our audience would like it. It would be cute. And that was all. That is, the people who were Expertise in a specific field, with the express aim of They should decide whether a contestant has what it takes, they should be impartial and they should occasionally appear alongside the amateur contestants, which would make the term “judge” meaningless. So what?
Unfortunately, the guys who made this “creative” decision are right. Our audience would so. In fact, they would have preferred it even more if the judges dressed in tutus had to do mud wrestling in a pit in the middle of the set. And sing while doing it. In fact, it would work even better to leave out the contestants altogether, because they are unknowns and we in our wise country look down on anyone who isn’t famous, and hire more celebrity “judges” and have them sing while cooking, tightrope walking and pugilistic boxing. That would be a show, for god’s sake! But would it be the show they bought? Which brings us to the question: why buy the rights to an internationally popular show if you don’t want to?
Why not develop an original format – ideally suited to the “Indian taste” according to market analysis, algorithms, data things and the Vastu Shastra – for a music-centered show in which judges are shot out of cannons and collide in the air to sing a duet?
If you think about it, it’s the same with everything else. We revel in buying, taking, borrowing, co-opting – when we can’t outright steal, which is our first choice – ideas from all over the world, good ideas mind you, from fields as diverse as architecture, film and cooking, and making them worse.
Give us a good book. We’ll make an even worse Indian version. Give us a tune, a film, a dish, a building, a pristine beach, an idyllic hill town, a curriculum, a revered monument, even a massacre memorial – no problem, we’ll make it worse. (Was there any need for Gobi Manchurian in this world?) And we’ll laud our new version as the better one and defend it to the death. And anyone who disagrees with this view is anti-national.
We are like the brat who cannot resist immediately dismantling the shiny new toy car he was given, piece by piece, looking at the wreckage, denying his own destructive idiocy, and saying, “Now, that’s much better.”
What makes us like this? Why do we have this pathological need to optimize, change, redesign, “improve”, rework, transform, modernize things? Why do we fix things that aren’t broken?
I believe the whole thing is in two parts. Taking something apart that is already made is easy. You don’t need to be any more skilled than the child with a screwdriver and hammer who is left alone with his new toy.
But staying with art, or rather popular art, for a moment – and this is more or less what the singer meant when he made this astute observation – what is this “Indian taste” that he speaks of and that artists must keep in mind when creating for our market?
What has changed since the time when the Brihadeshwara, the Veena, the Panchatantra and Pahari art was considered good as it was, ok for the “Indian taste”?
I would like to sign off with something that a friend, a typical Indian, did many years ago to prove my point. He wanted some quotes on creativity from well-known personalities to use in a seminar at his office. When my friend sought my advice, since Google is not omnipresent, I gave him a handy book of quotes.
A few days later my friend showed up again. He looked disappointed.
“Their quotes didn’t go so well,” he said.
“Technically, they’re not mine,” I replied. “But why?”
He showed me a piece of paper.
