When a young adult all of 21 years of age agreed for a tête-à-tête, I was super excited. Neither did he tell me what the topic of the conversation was going to be nor did I ask. We just played by the ear. I guess we also imagined that it will go well 😉 Ah!!! The conversation just flowed, meandered a bit with all imagination at play and came back to the topic.

When Ram told me the topic he wanted to have the conversation on (refer to the title of this blog :-)), my first question was

Me: Why this topic?

Ram: There are a few topics I had thought of, which I was comfortable to talk about and this is one of them.

Let me start with an example. The game Sudoku – You have to fill a grid with numbers 1 to 9 and you aren’t allowed to repeat any number. When you try to solve it, how do you do?

Me: Can I answer bluntly? I don’t play the game at all and I find it hard to even pause to look at it. Discomfort with numbers could be a reason. Word games are anytime my cup of tea.

Ram: I am not good at crosswords. In our college, all of us would have to pay for a newspaper subscription. We can’t open the paper wide and read it, while the class is going on. However, we can fold the paper to the Sudoku section. Sometimes I would sit in class and try it. I would have no pencil with me and if there is an error while I use my pen, it isn’t erasable. So I would draw the grid lines in my mind and keep the potential numbers in the different cells. Once I have the solution, I do it on the paper.

Me: (Looking stupefied to hear this and shot off a few questions): The grid in your mind? Not written down? Won’t your professor spot what you are doing instead of listening to the class? Will you be only person doing this?

Ram: It isn’t just me doing it, it is some of my friends too. It is like Bingo when we finish it. When the professors back is turned, whoever had finished solving Sudoku would raise their hand to convey that we are done.

Me: (Looking even more stupefied though with a smile, visualising what’s happening and thinking) Isn’t this what many of us did too when we were studying? I remember having a story book tucked into my subject book when a class was going on and I felt it was boring. He is doing it with Sudoku.

What if the professor asks a question based on what is being taught?

Ram: We answer the questions; while we do Sudoku, our attention is also on the class.

Me: How is this connected to imagination?

Ram: When I draw the grid in my mind, I am imagining different numbers in different cells and how that may add up to 9. This help me not only in my memory but also on the various possibilities that we have to solve a puzzle. Sudoku is a puzzle that at sometime someone would have thought was improbable. Something someone imagined one day!!

To give you another example – A friend saw my interest in taking pictures and videos and gave a camera that I could use (given on loan ofcourse). I started taking random pictures. I realised that the camera needed tools for different distances, different objects etc. I started to think of how a picture could be taken differently. Imagination!!

Attention in the class does not stay always focused on what is being taught. I started to think of composition of a picture, the colour palettes involved, the setting for a picture, how a subject would look when in the sun or when the light bounced off it etc etc. Imagination!!

Humans evolve when they are really bored with something or very lazy to do something. That is when creativity takes over. I began thinking of how I could take videos and cinematic shots. How can I take a shot differently from how someone else has taken? I imagined how that would look.

Me: While you constantly use the word imagine, I am thinking of what the word means. Image is a picture isn’t it? When we say imagine, it means – have a picture in the mind. Imagination is having a picture of what you want, in your mind. It is always in the present. For example – Imagine you are in space, imagine you are the Prime Minister of your country, Imagine you are the CEO of a company etc etc Every aspect of what you are asked to imagine is as though it is happening now. So when you are imagining yourself to be something or to have something, you are that now. The more you imagine, the more the possibility of the improbable becoming probable.

When you imagine something, you are also visualising it, you are also thinking of it.

Ram, you started off the conversation saying that imagination is crucial to evolve. What do you mean by evolve?

Ram: To know something more than what you did earlier and to use that knowledge, is evolving. When you imagine, you attempt to know more. When you know more, you are tempted to put your knowledge to use. You evolve and the  more you evolve, the more you imagine. It is cyclical.

I listen to diffrent genres of music. Rock, pop, classical and Bollywood. When I listen to songs, I visualise how the song could have been shot, the location etc. That visualisation fuels my imagination.

Music triggers emotions, which triggers images, which triggers imagination. I then evolve in my thinking.

Me: Brings me to another word – dream. What one dreams of, can also be imagined, isn’t it? They are not inter changeable but used in similar fashion sometimes. Dreaming is most times referred to as having images when we are sleeping. Imagining is something that we have when we are wide awake.

Dreams can be forgotten when we wake up but what we imagine stays etched in our mind because it happens when we are awake and alert.

Ram: I have been called a dreamer because I am ambitious.

Me: Is it because what you are thinking of is considered as impossible or improbable of happening; and therefore an imagination? How is your imagination fueling you to evolve?

Ram: I read the book ‘The Invisible Man’. I imagined how the invisible man would have talked and sought help from a friend. I Imagined how he looked like and that changed something in me. If I can imagine how an invisible man looked like, then that’s my imagination isn’t it? If I can imagine that, I can imagine how I want to be or what I want to become. I understood that if the impropable can be written and believed, then the gap between the improbable and reality closes.

I imagine of the different videos I can shoot and how I can edit them. This makes me accept opportunities that come my way, to shoot a film or to edit one.  I imagine of the different ways in which I can shoot a film, of how it can be different from someone else’s way of shooting it. In which case, I am putting myself in another person’s shoes while staying in mine. Same angle but a different lens… different angle but same lens..Same but different!!

I had an opportunity to be an assisstant director for a film. I have short films coming my way to do or to edit. All because of imagination!!

Me: The camera that your friend gave fueled your imagination, which fueled the way you visualised shooting and editing, which fueled you to think and learn and know, which manifested in you getting an opportunity to shoot and edit films.

Ram: It is amazing to hear how imagination finally leads to manifestation.

Me: That’s connection at play :-), If imagining something is considered ambitious, so be it. What’s improbable today can be a reality tomorrow. All the best, keep imagining and keep being ambitious.

Note: The maturity in the conversation from the 21 year old, was a delight to experience. When we started off this conversation, I didn’t know that this tête-à-tête would be so profound and powerful.

The power to imagine!!! .