The 'Grammar' of Geniuses

Most of the great creations and achievements in this world have come through the hands of some mad genius or another. What does it take to be a genius? Three square meals a day with milk, eggs, and nutritious food? No, no, none of that is necessary. Most geniuses are born geniuses. Through constant practice, this amazing aspect of theirs becomes even sharper and more pronounced.

Notice this: in your very office, one colleague spends eight full hours completing eight hours' worth of work without cutting any corners. Meanwhile, another colleague finishes exactly the same work brilliantly in two or two-and-a-half hours. The rest of the time, he does things that bring him joy. Now, if the boss happens to be a bit of a workaholic—meaning he doesn't like anyone sitting idle—he'll pile more tasks onto that person who finishes work quickly. Perhaps that genius employee completes even this extra work in relatively less time. He'll find a way to carve out the remaining time for his own pursuits. Yes, he will somehow find leisure time, and certainly without shirking his duties. He completes office work properly, just in less time. Geniuses always make time for the work they love. If necessary, while others sleep, spend time with family, chat with friends, or wander here and there, they work tirelessly, immersing themselves in their passion.

What does this tell us?

Let me explain a bit. If working twenty-four hours could make someone a genius, we'd see plenty of geniuses on every street corner. There's also a matter of capability here. Not everyone can do everything, no matter how much they want to. A tiger takes a certain amount of time to hunt and eat a deer, but for a donkey to hunt that same deer would take days or months—if it could hunt the deer at all!

Though everyone in the world has roughly the same skull structure and brain composition, not everyone's talent and field of expertise are alike. A single click by a genius photographer will be vastly different from the click of another skilled photographer. If having a camera were all it took to become a photographer, the world's streets would be crawling with photographers. The time a genius photographer needs to capture a beautiful scene in a photograph—to capture that same scene, someone of ordinary ability would need a hundred times longer. Even given that time, they might still fail at the task!

The time Pablo Picasso spends bringing a painting to life with a few strokes of his brush—for someone like you or me to accomplish the same task would require decades of practice, perhaps several lifetimes! Geniuses cannot be made; geniuses are born.

Let's think about a few famous individuals.

Consider Jibanananda Das's poem "Banalata Sen." This famous poem in Bengali literature was written with an utterly ordinary political prisoner named Banalata Sen in mind. She was imprisoned under preventive laws in Rajshahi jail in 1932 or 1933. Using the name of nearby Natore, he wrote this most popular of poems. In our daily lives, we too hear about so many people, learn their names. Yet could any of us, thinking of someone, write something like that even after decades of trying? There's a world of difference between genius and ordinary.

We know Shakib Al Hasan as arrogant and stubborn. Some of us even hate him intensely for this. Have we ever considered how fortunate it is to have a genius of his caliber on the team? The world's number one all-rounder is Bangladeshi—doesn't that make your chest swell with pride? A Shakib can afford to carry his arrogance. Yes, arrogance suits him. When counting people like you and me, why should he be included—doesn't this occur to us? For others to become an artist-level player like him requires practice upon practice, and even then, no one can come close to him. The same is true for India's Virat Kohli. Yes, a player of their level is worth more than the other ten team members combined!

Some take six balls to score six runs, others hit a six in one ball for six runs. Then again, some can't score six runs in thirty-six balls. There are differences, aren't there? On what logic do you say all people in the world are equal? How can an elephant and a goat be equal? Brother, even when lying down, an elephant is taller than a goat. After this, will you still say elephant and goat are brothers, there's no distinction between the two? Of course, for the "crime" of not making the goat a brother, the goat community might well label the elephant as arrogant! What can the poor elephant do about that? It can't jump around like a goat even if it wanted to! It wasn't born to go bounding about!

Arrogance suits geniuses. What appears as arrogance to us is simply natural behavior to them. They should be allowed to remain as they are. There's no point trying to understand someone like that. To understand a genius, one needs sufficient brains and the mentality to comprehend.

The world-famous sculptor Rodin. He carves stone to create sculptures. Those pieces of stone that appear to ten ordinary people as merely useless rocks are, to a Rodin, precious material or mines for sculpture. Cutting away at stone, he creates extraordinary sculptures. Hidden within insignificant stone lies such an artistic treasure that to see it, one needs Rodin's eyes. Everyone sees stone, but who can see the creation inside the stone like Rodin? How many can become a Rodin, even with relentless practice? It might be possible to become a talented sculptor through infinite effort, but to want to become a Rodin, one must be a genius. The difference between genius and talented lies precisely here.

I say again, some people are always far, far above others. If all humans were equal, the world would have advanced several thousand more years. Geniuses would be sold by the pound on street corners. Precisely because all humans' knowledge, intellect, and consciousness are never alike, each person becomes different in characteristics, in work, even in thought and awareness. All geniuses are talented, but not all talented people are geniuses. Those who come first or second in school, college, university, various exams—they can at most be talented, not geniuses. Genius is something else entirely!

Watching Uttam Kumar's acting, you feel as if you're witnessing real events, this simply cannot be acting. When he plays a beggar's character, you think he must have been born a beggar! In other characters too, we see him blend in so completely! Truly amazing to watch! Whatever type of character Aamir Khan is given, he adapts himself to that character in the most extraordinary way. Looking at slightly different genre movies, we don't see anyone who can even stand near an Om Puri or a Smita Patil. Someone like that is born maybe once in several decades. After all this, shall we still say all humans are equal?

The work that you and I accomplish through very laborious means, geniuses can do much more easily than us through their intellect and natural talent, but a hundred times better. What a genius can do, a talented or skilled person cannot do even if they try—perhaps such a thing wouldn't even occur to them. What occurs to a genius's mind won't occur to a million talented and skilled people. Any company can hire a talented person if they want, but you can't just hire a genius unless they're willing to work there. So I think, a company decides a talented person's salary, while a genius decides his own salary. I'm using "salary" metaphorically here—this salary cannot be measured by money alone.

Geniuses are personally a bit mad. Mad in the sense that their actions don't make sense to our ordinary minds or experience. They can't be fit into any rules or grammar. Let me tell you some interesting things, listen.

Benjamin Franklin would study and write completely naked for nearly an hour, keeping all doors and windows of his room open. He called this practice his “air bath.”

Former UFC light heavyweight champion and global star Lyoto Machida, like his father, drinks his own urine every morning at breakfast as “natural medicine.” He believes this habit helps cleanse his body of toxins.

From Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, we learn that Steve Jobs would eat exactly the same type of food all seven days of the week. If it was carrots, he’d eat nothing but carrots the entire week; if it was apples, he’d consume only apples.

Mark Zuckerberg always wears the same colored clothes—gray t-shirt and blue jeans. He’s never seen in anything else. Until 2011, he would only eat meat from animals he had hunted himself.

Stephen King always eats a slice of cheesecake before sitting down to write. He believes this habit helps him write.

The super-genius artist Pablo Picasso had countless lovers, girlfriends, admirers, and mistresses. He apparently wasn’t particularly discriminating when it came to sex. But this doesn’t mean that engaging in Picasso-like reckless sexual behavior would make one a Picasso. If it were that simple, we’d see countless geniuses on every street corner whenever we opened our eyes.

Keeping in mind all the debates and controversies about Humayun, I must say we were supremely fortunate to have had a Humayun Ahmed. It was Humayun who brought Bangladeshi readers back from Sunil-Samaresh-Shirshendu to Bangladesh. We know of no one who earned more money from selling book rights than he did. Those who are overly concerned with his personal life could never, all together, match even half the talent of the writer Humayun Ahmed. One must look at the work of geniuses, not at their personal lives.

The incredibly genius artist Kishore Kumar married four times. His other love affairs are also well known. The godlike sitarist Pandit Ravi Shankar married twice and had several love affairs and live-in relationships. We know their family lives weren’t happy either. Yet none of these personal matters could diminish their legendary greatness even by a fraction. Of course, women would be attracted to them—that’s only natural! Would women fall in love with them or with talentless people like you and me? Think about it—even if someone ordinary were given the “opportunity” to marry four hundred times, could they ever become equal to even the dust of their feet? In reality, there’s no connection between a person’s personal lifestyle and their achievements. The world tolerates and accepts the chaotic lives of geniuses with a smile, but for the rest of us, it’s all disapproval.

*For many days across many miles/ spending much, wandering many lands…*
There’s hardly an educated Bengali who doesn’t know this poem. Let’s learn the story of how this poem came to be.

Young Satyajit once went with his mother to “Uttarayan” in Santiniketan to meet Rabindranath Tagore in the morning. He had brought an autograph book. As soon as he extended the book, Rabindranath said, “Keep this with me, come tomorrow morning to collect it.” The next day, Satyajit went as promised. He found letters, writing notebooks, and diaries scattered on the table, with Rabindranath seated behind. Seeing young Satyajit, he began searching for the purple notebook. After fumbling around for about three minutes, the notebook emerged. Handing it to Satyajit, Rabindranath told his mother, “He’ll understand the meaning of this when he’s a bit older.” Written in that notebook was this famous eight-line poem. A genius’s “autograph” becomes such a magnificent creation of literature! Being able to stay even near the dust of their feet is one of life’s greatest fortunes!

Could you or I have created such a work even if given decades to try and practice? One might become skilled through practice, but one cannot become a genius. Geniuses are born. If we hadn’t gone to school like Rabindranath, none of us would have become Rabindranath—at best, we might have become laborers or rickshaw pullers.

Now I come to someone I know personally. One day I was talking about cinema with my boss, an Additional Commissioner whom I work under. Sir loves watching movies. During our conversation, I asked, “Sir, can you cook?” He answered me this way: “Sushanta, I don’t just cook—I cook extremely well. I can cook much better than any woman I know.” This isn’t the arrogance of the incompetent; this is the confidence of the capable. I also learned that Sir cooks wonderfully and finds great joy in this work. If you can do something well, it means you really enjoy doing it. Essentially, sincerity toward one’s passion and continuous practice are what shape a person into a genius.

Geniuses must be allowed to live in their own way. They must be given the freedom to live with their own mad, disorganized, and eccentric habits. They actually practice their creativity within their own sphere through such madness and strange activities. If this is prevented, their creative abilities get destroyed. This would be a tremendous loss for the world. History bears witness to how many geniuses have been lost and vanished because they were forced away from their eccentric lifestyles. When geniuses are prevented from living as they choose, it not only directly affects their work and creativity but also has terrible effects on their personal lives. Obstructed in their work flow and lifestyle, geniuses begin harboring anger within themselves. Eventually, this anger manifests toward the people close to them in their personal lives. Due to constant anger or internal resentment with those close to them, geniuses are usually not happy in their personal lives. People who understand them are truly rare. Therefore, we often see that a genius is a profoundly unhappy person in their personal life.

Geniuses have no grammar. Their behavior and thoughts cannot be understood or even guessed at with ordinary intelligence. A genius cannot be confined within the frame of our thinking. Attempting to do so means being unjust to them. Well, let’s not get into all this analysis. It’s too much for the mind to handle anyway. Simply put, the most peaceful way to live in this world is to live in your own way and let others live in their own way. If someone lives without harming anyone else, then however they choose to live, there’s no point in judging, gossiping, or analyzing it. Only the worthless spend their time obsessing over others’ personal lifestyles. If you’re always trailing behind someone, it’s impossible—impossible and impossible—to get ahead of them! We’ve received only one life to live. What greater fortune is there than being able to spend that life beautifully?