Who wins between being creative and being tolerant?

I was reading an article the other day on how stand-up comedians in India can’t really share all their jokes publicly because it may hurt someone’s sentiments. The article talked about how the comedians have a group within themselves where they would share such censored jokes. I felt sorry for them, for the need to curb their creative minds. Creativity shouldn’t be banned or controlled, and we should all be tolerant enough to accept whatever the other person thinks about.

But today I saw Tanmay Bhat’s latest video mocking Sachin Tendulkar and Lata Mangeshkar. At the outset let me say that it’s in such a bad taste that I wouldn’t even recommend you guys to watch it, if you haven’t already. There’s one line that Sachin masked Tanmay says to Lata masked Lata: John Snow is dead, even you should die. Why would anyone, anyone on this earth talk about someone’s death? Who are you to ask people to die? How is death related to humor?

Among all these questions running in my head, I got reminded of that article about comedians having to restrain their creativity and today it felt absolutely right.

While one part of me kept thinking that Tanmay should totally be banned for such an insult, the other thought why can’t we be more accepting of him? After all he is just being creative.

Who wins between being creative and being tolerant?

This guy has 1.3 Million followers on Twitter alone. All these people surely like what he has churned out over the years and hence love to read, re-tweet, like and share what he does. So, once in a while, if his creativity doesn’t meet the generally acceptable criteria of the public, so what’s wrong? Why can’t he be forgiven? Why can’t we be more tolerant of this joke of his?

And while I was racking my brain to help me know what’s right and what’s wrong, I saw an image of a fish curry on a friend’s timeline. And I thought, its actually as simple as that.

If you are making a dish for yourself, you are free to make it whichever way YOU like-spicy, oily, burnt, whatever. When you are serving for your family, you look at the health conditions of your family members and make changes in it. Sometimes, you keep a little bit aside for yourself to make it chillier because that’s the way YOU like it. But for everyone else, it’s made the way they like it. While running a restaurant, you look at what customers would like, give them customization options and serve them something that will make them come back to you.

Creativity, be it any field is exactly this. If you are making something to satisfy your creative need, then feel free to experiment. But when you serving it to the outside world, then you make things which the audience will like. And hence you are sensitive to them. You need to be tolerant to their needs.

Once in a while your creativity will fail to judge the pulse of your audience, even best of cooks don’t always make the yummiest dish. That’s it.

So while we all hate what Tanmay has cooked for us this time, let’s hope Tanmay and all other stand-up comedians don’t restrict their creativity and keep coming up with dishes that will keep wanting us to go back to them.

If you liked this post & would like to read more such posts, then do subscribe to storysideup emails. You can also like our Facebook page (storysideup) or follow us on Twitter (@storysideup) to stay connected with our stories.