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Ripeness is all
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The media has always played up the highest, fastest, strongest, and richest. Now it has a new category: the youngest, or sometimes the youngest-ever
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IT'S MONEY, HONEY It takes time for talent to flower and ripen. That's what we used to believe. Now, everyone is in a hurry to gain publicity PHOTO: MURALI KUMAR K.
I got invited to a Sunday mango party. It was like potluck except that people brought nothing but mangoes. The idea was to pool in as many varieties as possible and then start gorging on them.
I didn't go to the party because I didn't want to be a spoilsport. If I had gone, all my suppressed rage against what's being peddled this season in the name of mangoes would have erupted. Haven't you eaten sham aam yet? I have, and I'm hopping mad. Certain half-raw chemically ripened impostors are masquerading as kings. Badami — thoo! Kalapadi — how dare you?
They rot before they turn ripe, developing brown spots instead of sporting a blush or a golden hue. Fruit with great potential is plucked before its prime and ripened by artificial means. Reminds you of Budhia, doesn't it?
Fruit tastes best when harvested in season, when it's given time to mature naturally, but global market forces have altered horticulture beyond recognition. To meet the insatiable demand of the developed world, all fruit is available all round the year. Sellers ruthlessly cull the produce, selecting only what conforms to precise specifications and condemning the rest to juice or cattle-feed. Meritocracy rules! Pernicious practices such as coating fruits with coloured edible wax and injecting them with sugar syrup are accepted as the norm. In the end, what you eat is as phoney as a counterfeit note, but it looks as luscious as a supermodel when displayed on the supermarket shelf.
Our marketing ploys are not as sophisticated, thank heavens, but chemical ripening has become too common for comfort. In the manner of girl brides being auctioned to the highest bidders, immature fruit is sold to calculating middlemen. But this sort of greed is not confined to fruit alone. Thinly disguised as ambition, it pervades areas of human achievement as well.
It takes time for talent to flower and ripen. That's what we used to believe. Now, everyone is in a hurry to gain publicity. The young dancer is pushed towards a ranga pravesha before she's ready, the young writer obliged to submit a manuscript to meet a marketing deadline, and every flash-in-the-pan is hailed as a prodigy or a genius — words that have lost their meaning. I'm amused whenever I read a report about a toddler who can recognise flags, recite capitals, or rattle off the makes of automobiles. I'm less amused when I read about six-year-olds driving cars for long distances.
Media has always played up the highest, fastest, strongest, and richest. Now it has discovered a new category: the youngest, or sometimes the youngest-ever. And while doing so it has given over-ambitious parents something to get fixated on. They want their child to break a record before she's shed her milk teeth. If a nine-year-old filmmaker wins an award their child must be a Ray by the time she's six. If a four-year-old can recite the Vedas their child must emerge from the womb with a mantra on his lips.
Talking of records, some people actually take the Guinness Book seriously. It's a compilation of weird and absurd feats that have little to do with talent. Growing the longest moustache, giving the longest lecture, staying the longest time in a snake pit — these are ventures meant to entertain you rather than give you proof of excellence. Proof of endurance, yes, but not always of talent.
Today, talent is considered useless unless it can be converted into hard cash. You might have seen a TV commercial that denigrates modest ambitions: it snickers at those who want to be Indiranagar Idol or ace cricketer of Shanti Colony rather than Indian Idol or ace cricketer of the Indian team. (Coincidentally, while I write this last line a message titled "audition" beeps on my mobile, dangling a "chance to win stardom" through "an exclusive talent hunt".) You don't sing because you love to; you don't play cricket because it thrills you; you don't act because it frees you. The sole purpose of your talent is to help you become a star in the shortest possible time. After you've won fame and money your talent can rot for all you care.
Like a fruit that is waxed and readied for the supermarket shelf, the singer must be photogenic and have a stage presence, or else she's no star. There may be hundreds of better singers but if they lack "star quality" they'll remain unheard. As for experience, one wonders if it holds any value at all in today's world.
Talent nurtured over the years bears more fruit than talent shown off just to grab the day's headlines. Genuine talent can further the cause of an art and lead it in a new direction in a manner that narrow ambition never can.
I'm not gainsaying the fact that ambition can be good for you. Taken in the right doses it can improve social health. It is deeply moving, in fact, to see people who are poor but ambitious, refusing to be beaten down and fighting for a better life for themselves and their children. But the privileged, I believe, could do with a little <243>less ambition of the o'er-vaulting kind.
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