Perfection or Versatility?

"Every six months you add a new profession to your list," laughs my friend Manish Malhotra at a dinner table. "I won't be surprised if one morning I heard that you have decided to be an astronaut!" In a world where versatility and multitasking is often lauded, his reaction seems odd. But peer a little and one realises where he is coming from. He is a leading designer and has consistently taken his designing skills to new levels during his twenty-five year career. Day after day he thinks about his craft, practices it with passion and hence excels. Obviously, according to him single-mindedness is the path to perfection. A little more layered explanation comes from respected Hindi poet-writer Naresh Saxena who tells me, "Every time we write it's just an attempt ? successful at times but unsuccessful, most of the time. A successful writer or poet has many more attempts in his/her graph and hence has a higher strike rate!"

When I reflect on these words I wonder if exploring various avenues of creativity actually steers one away from perfection. Does trying out different areas of creativity fritter your energy in different directions to not give you focus to sharpen any one skill?

Week after week one reads about number of films falling by the wayside despite having good music, interesting storylines and good star cast. And of course all of this is attributed to one reason – lack of 'good' or 'original' stories. But what if the problem is not only with the stories but also with the storytellers? Is a good idea or a novel story enough to carry an entire film? Two recent releases, Roy and Shamitabh had very interesting story ideas.

Then what explains their non-success? Is it because as creative people we are so distracted that once we hit upon a novel idea or a story we think it's enough to carry a film? Or is it because we live in a world where choreographers become directors, directors judge reality shows, writers become actors and actors write scripts and all of this causes a loss of perspective or conviction to focus on one craft and hone it to perfection (or at least somewhere close to it)?

Of course my questions raise the quintessential argument of what is better, perfection or versatility? And I don't claim to have answers. But someone once told me that sometimes even if you don't have the right answer asking a pertinent question is good enough!