Celebrating the imperfect

Interesting excerpt from this 2003 article about the author, Amit Chaudhuri...(emphasis mine):

"..it is the imperfect, the flawed, that Chaudhuri celebrates as allowing not only great creativity but the possibility of a truly liberal, open society. Talking not of Lawrence, but of Indian society today, he laments the fact that nowadays there is no place for daydreamers, for those that "yearn for the irresponsible", for what he calls "the cult of failure": "When I was growing up (in Kolkata), if you were sensitive and intelligent, basically, you must be a misfit. I used to laugh at the cult of failure, but now I do believe that there has to be a place for the misfit, for the outsider. The person who lacks ambition or is an outsider is seen to mount an implicit critique of the value systems which people live by, and is therefore looked upon with great intolerance in this society."

Also later in the article...this phrase: "a heady cocktail of outrage and despair." Now I know how to describe how I feel about India sometimes. Having said that... Jai Hind... Happy Independence Day (whatever that means!)