Krishna Shastri Devulapalli | I don’t know why the mediocre bird sings
As a young fellow starting out as a magazine illustrator, my childhood dream come true, I miraculously got the opportunity to freelance for a prominent Tamil magazine. When I say miraculously, I mean nepotism. My illustrator-cartoonist father, despite his misgivings, poor man, had no choice but to introduce me to the editor knowing I was dead set on following in his footsteps.
After a couple of my illustrations were published (milked dry for bewildered praise from friends and family), while handing over a story, the sub-editor said something to me.
“Your illustrations are good,” he began, but the tiniest of pauses at the end of the compliment indicated that the real message was yet to come. “But there is scope for improvement.”
For the next 20-odd years, I tried to follow the advice of that sub-editor, god bless him. I managed to make a living only because I found ways to build a career in which illustration played only one part. Till I became a full-time writer, and said goodbye to illustration with a huge sigh of relief. Because, though I had gotten better at it over the years, I knew I would never be as good as I wanted to be, and not even in the same ballpark as my father.
A couple of weeks ago, I had to go to a book release function. I say “had to” because I normally wouldn’t. And by “normally wouldn’t”, I mean even if I were taken gagged, and bound to the front end of a JCB. I was going because I owed the author one.
The function, alas, unfolded as I had envisioned. A pathologically boring moderator asked profoundly dumb questions, a desperately needy writer plumbed the depths of her anguish to produce even more boring responses, followed by a couple of readings of prose so pedestrian that you wanted to check if the dais had a zebra crossing. I had come prepared. My small water bottle contained more vodka than water.
But what I wasn’t prepared for was the response.
Wild applause, thoroughly baffling laughter for catatonically unfunny lines, requests for more readings from the audience at the packed venue, followed by a frenzied spree of selfies with the overwhelmed writer, and a queue for signed copies.
A few people filmed the comatose proceedings on their phones! And shared it on social media!
Were they serious? The one hundred and forty-seven people in the hall who weren’t me — were they seeing, hearing something else? Was I experiencing an alternate reality, thanks to a wrinkle in the space-time continuum? Had my wife added something to the vodka?
Because what I had endured was about the grandest show of mediocrity I have come across in a long time. Politeness and my wife’s vice-like grip were all that kept me from running out of the venue and strangling passersby. Aware of the high probability of this — being tipped over into psychopathy — was the chief reason I stopped going to films, plays, concerts and art exhibitions.
Why is there such a profusion of rampant mediocrity in most fields today? The laws of probability say there must have always been. That isn’t the question. The truly baffling question here is why, oh why, are we all maniacally celebrating it?
Could it be because the latter encourages the former? Meaning, it is this perplexingly unbridled celebration of mediocrity that is drawing out of the woodwork all those who wouldn’t otherwise dare practise art, literature or theatre. And making them go “Watch out, suckers. Here I come with my pedestrian book/play/movie”.
Let’s take social media, for what better, all-pervasive testing ground in this age? What is it if not a sandpit and transfusion centre for the mediocre.
Where, when we need him the most, is that sub-editor today? That person who can tell us politely that, perhaps, instead of being an actor, flautist or poet we may be better off being an ear-wax remover, knife-thrower or NRI?
I won’t be insulted in the slightest if you disbelieve what I am about to tell you. But this happened. At the end of the book do, as I was dragging myself to my car like a villain’s henchman in a big hero film, thanks to my unexpressed violence imploding, I saw a man, a senior, trying to get into his car. As I attempted to assist him, I recognised him. It was my sub-editor, now retired, after a long and distinguished career in Tamil journalism.
I introduced myself. He didn’t seem to remember me. Then I mentioned my father’s name.
“Great artist,” he said.
“Did you enjoy the event, sir?” I said.
He gave a hint of a smile before saying, “There was scope for improvement.”
