Hi,
I remember it only in pieces. A dim bulb. Kerala's brown rice, spread on a plate. A room full of relatives. My cousin, the same age as me, went first. Then my father's elder brother took my finger and traced the first letters into the grains. And then he let go.That is Vidyarambham, or Ezhuthiniruthu, the beginning of learning. This morning, children all across Kerala sat on someone's lap and did the same. The day also marks a beginning for dance, music and the other arts. Keep that moment in mind. This year I want to add one more beginning to the day. I'm calling it Creative Vidyarambham: an invitation to start learning creativity as a skill, the way we once started learning letters. This letter is the first step.
A new and useful word
"Creativity" is about as old as the telephone. It first appeared in 1875. In 1926, exactly a hundred years ago, Graham Wallas wrote The Art of Thought. He described the creative moment in four stages: prepare, leave the problem alone, let the idea arrive, check it. Yet before 1950, says historian Samuel Franklin in The Cult of Creativity, there were almost no books or classes on it.
After the Second World War, it woke up. Not because of artists, but because of machines. As computers took over routine work, managers asked: if the machine does the routine, what is the person for? Creativity became the answer. In 1953, psychologist Morris Stein defined it as something new and useful. Useful, in the end, to the company that sells it.
The older words, genius and inspiration, belonged to the gifted few. "Creativity" said everyone has it. It was democratic, and it cut both ways. It freed people: your ideas count. And it gave managers something new to demand.
It is happening again
Now the machine writes, draws and answers, and the old question is back. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 ranks creative thinking among the top and fastest-growing skills employers want. Creativity is no longer a gift. It is a skill on a list.
That can go two ways. The democratic promise kept: a 2024 review of 169 studies found that creativity training works. Or the cult, louder than before: one more line on a CV.
A co-creator with the machine who knows only the slogan is just a better operator. So it matters to know what creativity really is.
Older than the word
The word is young. The feeling is not. Every language holds its own original thought about making something new.
In Sanskrit and Malayalam, pratibhā comes from a root meaning "to shine": an idea flashing, lit from within. Bhāvana is imagination. Sṛṣṭi, creation, comes from the verb sṛj, which means both to create and to let go.
In Chinese and Japanese, 創, "to begin", is drawn with a knife and also means a wound. To begin, you make a cut.
In Arabic, ibdāʿ is bringing into being something with no precedent. Something with no before.
In Finnish, luoda means to create, to shovel snow and to shed light: a path cleared through the snow, with light falling on it.
In Latin, creare first meant to make grow. In Swahili, buni is to invent. In Māori, auaha is to shape, as a carver shapes shell.
A flash. A letting go. A cut. A cleared path. Growing, inventing, shaping. Each culture held on to a different part of the same thing. None of them asks whether it is useful.
And when the English word travelled, almost every language built its own version from those old roots. Malayalam made sargātmakata from sarga, the same sṛj. Finnish made luovuus from luoda. Swahili made ubunifu from buni. Japanese made 創造性. Arabic needed nothing new: it already had ibdāʿ.
Back to the rice
For a few seconds, the elder's hand shapes each letter. That is the method, the hundred years of research. Then the hand lets go and the child writes alone. That is sarga, the feeling. Wallas's second stage is letting go too: you leave the problem alone.
You need both. Without the guiding hand, the child never learns the shapes. Without the letting go, the child never writes a word of their own.
So this is how we will learn: feel the word in your own language, then use the theory to understand how that feeling works. Once you know the mechanism, you don't have to wait for the feeling. You can call it back.
When machines can trace every letter, the letting go is ours. That is why this is called the Feel Letter.
Try this week
Find the word for creativity in your native tongue, and the older root beneath it. Next time you're stuck, use its literal meaning as an instruction. If it means letting go, drop your first idea. If it means a cut, cut the problem smaller.
One small request
Reply with your word and its root. I'll share the best ones in a later letter.
Until the next one, on Sunday 1 November: The idea that keeps bathing.
Alen Tom
P.S. For the next ten days, I'll share one small idea a day on LinkedIn and Instagram. Follow along with #CreativeVidyarambham. The beginning is yours; the ten days are just a hand to hold.