issue #4

These days one cannot surf channels on the television without stumbling upon one talent hunt or the other. The way things are shaping up everyone will have a "super singer" or a "item bomb" or what-not, among their next-door neighbours!

In the name of scouting for hidden talent, the media is blurring the lines between the good, the bad and the downright ugly! Such celebration of mediocrity would be the dream of Elsworth Toohey (from Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead") and severely damages the worth of those who really deserve to stand apart with their achievements.

Surely answering a motley group of general knowledge questions doesn't make one a child "genius". Getting through auditions by a television channel and shooting to fame as "the next cine star" is a downright insult to the scores of drama schools graduates who painstakingly queue up in front of their favourite movie director's house, often for months on end, just to get noticed!

There will be a hundred voices which sing as well but none as famous as Lata Mangeshkar. It takes more to being an icon than mere talent which is aplenty. In fact the very allure of celebritydom lies in its scarcity. We should not be destroying that by churning out celebrities by the dozen!

And finally, though its everyone's dream to be "the actor" or "the writer", if everyone becomes an author who will be the discerning reader? A captive audience is more essential to a performance than the performer. For every poet who dreams there has to be people who translate that into reality.

sumandatta