Creativity can straighten any curve of crisis

"A tree that is unbending is easily broken”. These words of Lao Tzu summarise the most important skill these uncertain times: adaptability.

Last year, words and language saw a total volte-face. Distance education flaunted itself as the only education, social distancing grabbed more headlines than social networking, mobile phones, that were once ostracised from classrooms, carried a whole institution within itself, homework lost its privileged status and monopoly when 'Work from Home' entered the picture.

Home theatre didn’t sound anything special when every home became an OTT theatre and the uncertain extension of lockdown helped create an aversion among people towards gadgets.

The tectonic shift from actual classrooms to virtual ones was something that teachers, students and the institutions were not prepared for.

But every crisis is the mother of creativity and every apparent lockdown holds within itself a key of innovation. This digital metamorphosis is a call for an unexplored realm within all of us. As long as we remain complacent in the cocoons of the known, we will never discover the bright and colourful butterflies of possibilities within us.

These challenging and capricious times call for an undying spirit to heroically encounter adversities.

If you straighten a question mark, it becomes an exclamation, a wonder. Life is similar. At every crisis in life, when we are confused with questions, remember it is calling for deeper, creative responses.

Creativity can straighten any curve of crisis. Radio drama is one of the results of such an attempt by me to straighten a classroom crisis. While teaching some of the stories and plays online where the dramatic and expressive feel have to be brought out, I felt my class sounded boring to children.

Thinking from the point of view of a learner, I felt bored too. That left me at crossroads. What next? Then came the light of reason, when I realised that it is important to transform a word into a sound and a sound into a visual. In the actual classrooms, most of the communication is visual, where the teacher’s expression, body language, the performing space all turn literature into an amazing experience.

I felt the need for a creative solution to the constraints of teaching lessons that exigently call for visual and auditory experience for the learners virtually.

This crisis which fuelled my imagination to look for an innovative method of inspiring the students in learning: a Radio Drama based on a prescribed short story.

A shower of hope in a dry land. The work was assigned and in a week’s time, the students' creative responses flooded my inbox. I trained my students in the nuances of translating a textual language into a visual and auditory one.

Being far off from one another aggravated the challenge and we had to interact on the phone, hold virtual practice sessions and arrive at the perfection we aimed at. We uploaded it on YouTube and the response has been amazing.

Adaptability is the intelligence to drop old shoes and wear what fits now, something which makes walking better and easier too.

Three decades ago, Ghunuram fought this critical, life changing and life threatening challenge in Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s Bagh Bahadur, a movie that metaphorically depicted and predicted the inexorable transition of times and the inner and outer battle we need to keep fighting. Whether we win the battle or not, life should go on and we must reprogramme ourselves to don new roles to fit into the new normal. So, shed old habits and look for new vistas of creativity. You will discover many unexplored depths of your own potential.

(The author is an English teacher, Kendriya Vidyalaya, INS Dronacharya, Kochi)