SECTION A
Essay
125 marks
Inspiration for creativity springs from the effort to look for the magical in the mundane.
WRITE IN
90 min
1,000–1,200 words
Reading the topic
The topic says creativity is sparked not by waiting for extraordinary moments but by looking closely at ordinary things until they reveal something wonderful. The examiner expects an essay on attention, curiosity and reframing the everyday, across art, science and grassroots innovation.
ThesisCreativity is less a rare gift than a disciplined habit of attention that finds new meaning and new solutions in ordinary life.
Dimensions to cover
- 1Art and literature: great storytellers turn small towns, kitchens and street life into universal themes
- 2Science: everyday irritations and observations have led to inventions when someone asked why they happen
- 3Grassroots innovation: rural innovators solve local problems with local materials, showing that the mundane hides ingenuity
- 4Education: rote learning trains students to overlook the ordinary, while inquiry-based learning teaches them to wonder at it
- 5Mental life: practices of mindfulness and gratitude cultivate the attention that creativity requires
Counter-view
- Critics argue that real creativity requires exposure to the new and extraordinary, not staring at the familiar. The essay should reply that novelty is often available only to the few, while the habit of seeing the ordinary freshly is open to everyone, which makes it the more democratic source of creativity
Open and close
- Open: Open with a young Satyajit Ray filming children running through a field of white kaash flowers to watch a train go by, a mundane moment that became one of cinema's most remembered scenes
- Close: Conclude that the magical is not elsewhere but unnoticed, and that a creative society is one that teaches its people to notice
Where marks usually go
- Treating 'magical' as supernatural and writing about superstition or religion instead of wonder and perception
- Listing famous inventors without explaining how each one looked at something ordinary differently
- Ignoring creativity in public life, such as frugal innovation and governance, and limiting the essay to the arts
Examples that fit
- LiteratureR.K. Narayan's fictional town of Malgudi, full of clerks, schoolboys and shopkeepers, turned ordinary South Indian life into world literature.Malgudi Days, R.K. Narayan
- HistorySatyajit Ray's Pather Panchali (1955) found poetry in a poor Bengali family's daily life, from a passing train to monsoon rain.Pather Panchali, dir. Satyajit Ray (1955); Satyajit Ray Society
- CaseMansukhbhai Prajapati, a potter from Gujarat, designed the Mitticool clay refrigerator that works without electricity, turning a traditional craft into an innovation.National Innovation Foundation India, grassroots innovator profiles
- HistorySwiss engineer George de Mestral noticed burrs sticking to his dog's fur after a walk and studied them, which led to the invention of Velcro.Velcro Companies, company history; Smithsonian Magazine