We should seek excellence but we don’t: Ravi Dubey

Actor Ravi Dubey turned poet with Aankade, where he urges people to pay attention to talent rather than numbers. Talking about the dig at the industry’s box office obsession, he says, “box office collections, TV ratings, views on songs is the lens through which we are judged in the industry and gauges your potential. If you get the numbers all is well but if you don’t, kya aap kamyab kalaakar nahin? Our self worth usually is tied to validation from others and they judge us by numbers.”

In the poem, he explains that the not-so-good content works “because niyat kalakaar aur aankade star bante hain. A product should be about quality, which sadly it isn’t”. Dubey stresses that this scenario of chasing numbers starts from childhood, with grades and first salary and continues all your life. “And not just showbiz but every industry. We should seek excellence but we don’t. The need and ability to push ourselves should not be undermined by numbers and rat race. Today, the world is changing and while earlier only a certain kind of content worked, today people are ready to experiment and audiences want only good content. There have been times when people go to see a film that made R200 at the box office and later feel it was not a good film. We have seen that a lot of hype is created around a product and if a 100 people have seen it, we should too, as it must be good but that is not a given.”

He also shared how the pressure of numbers has stopped during the lockdown, motivating people to invest in productive activities and making them fall in love with their skills. “When most creative people start their journeys, everyone dreams of doing their best and showing their talent, but soon in this business, you end up looking at each other and then start changing and focusing more on the numbers than talent. Now we have to focus on what makes us happy and excel in creativity,” he says.