Imagine...

Imagination can take you anywhere....A book I was reading recently was more heartfelt than the video I saw for the same book. The reason, well the way its written and the ability of mind to imagine and paint - paint universities, paint campus, paint houses, paint people, paint memories on the large canvas...Anything is possible. Mind is a wonderful as well as a dangerous thing. It can give you the power of positive imagination as well as the negative to make problems seem bigger than they are. You can only solve problem made big by ur imagination, by your positive imagination and your heart.

Just painting these pictures once a while...brings a new meaning, a happy state of mind. The gift of imagination and love are the two greatest gifts to mankind. We actually fail to realize how important these 2 factors are more often.
I think I am entering the harry potter mode since it released yesterday. Millions of children actually live in this imagination and live it like reality. It is so well painted. I actually want to meet the true harry potter charachter and visit 9 and 3/4 its that real. I wish....

I still remember the movie "wizard of Oz" (1939), saw it when I was in 5th grade. It was a film which starts in eastman color and then comes to color as the girl comes into fairy land. I confess its the most colorful transition and I must have seen it nearly 10 times. It feels childish to watch it now, but I still could if left on my own... :)
The girl is singing this song dreaming when she actually is transported to that place:
Somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high.
There's a land that I heard of Once in a lullaby.
Somewhere, over the rainbow, skies are blue.
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true.
Someday I'll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far Behind me.
Where troubles melt like lemon drops, Away above the chimney tops.
That's where you'll find me.
Somewhere, over the rainbow, bluebirds fly. Birds fly over the rainbow,
Why then - oh, why can't I?
If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow,
Why, oh, why can't I?

sighhhhh....It definitely transports you to the neverland...

Similar are my attachments to "baker street", Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson and the joy of much cheered Dr. Watson is equally shared with the comeback of sherlock holmes after his fake death....
The famous five's treasure island, smugglers top, kirrin island and sea are the places that really exist and which I did really visit every summer vacation. Chilling with the my dog on the beach. When I was young I still wanted to go to UK to actually see if the picture in my mind really did match anything up there...
The lilac inn and the Nancy drew from River Heights....are real people and places created after years of following her through her growing age and solving mysteries with her dad every other month and driving down to every mysterious cottage with her cousins george and bess...
The girls school Malory tower was the best girls school I really wanted to be in definitely after Hogwarts...
"Alice in wonderland" is by far the most random instance imagination I have ever seen. It is a book correctly made for children keeping in mind their attention span and hence the events in the book happen quickly and randomly. I am amazed at the skill of the author to capture such randomness in one small book.
"The little prince" is a book which does total justice to the word " a child's imagination". Its published in 180 languages across the world. That tells how many more children could visualize their dreams...

I have over the years come to respect writers a lot and by lot I mean so much that I wish I could be one someday. Its like music which has always been a part of my life. Writers have the extraordinary knack of capturing the mind and putting it on paper and then with the same ability to again free the mind so that others can see.
I cannot imagine seeing a movie or listening to an audio book if the book expecailly is not real world and requires a lot of imagination. The computer tapes and Ipods do not do justice to it.

I would so much prefer to have the crisp sound of the pages, the scent of a new book, the details of the cover, the beauty of heartfelt acknowledgements, the random page of the book written as preface and the book itself. I do not wish to miss out on any of it..
I remember when I used to have tons of enid blytons and nancy drew and I would scribble my name on 15 page of every book, so even if I find it with someone else or loose it, I did be able to just tell my book apart when I get it back...
I even maintained a register for that..Yes you can call this freakishness or a desire to treasure the childhood in which I have already visited other places on earth and also father away across the rainbow :) I got a childhood full of sweet memories because of these great writers and I got memories which were shared by so many more children that I still instantly bond with anybody who had followed Enid blyton, Carolene keen or Aurthur Conan Doyle.

I did like to finish up with an apt quote from "the little prince"
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye"

Texting competition

Texting competition: prize 50000 dollars...

http://www.lgtexter.com/

Again on my 90.3 today listening to a piece of news made me go off road on car for a second
I was kind of surprised. Here I am tired with work day,..trying to get one line of code through review, bored to do even another key stroke, come back home tired and crash on bed..
and this girl wins a prize of 50000 dollars texting during her classes , gym, swim, talking etc and about 500 messages per day.

What happened to sanity?? and who just gave away that much money??


Indeed, according to CNN, the forlorn girl who came in fourth, Jordan Rowe, failed to accurately text
"which wicked witch wished which more wicked witch in the well?" while having to listen to an actor dressed as an emoticon talk trash about her sister.
How did the emoticon even know she had a sister? Why would an emoticon talk trash? Why would an emoticon talk at all? ...Bad round really bad round..
Is it a texting competition or a phsychological research subject we are talking of?

Well, it all came down to a tiebreaker in the best of three final.
And the two girls in the final round had to text: "Zippity Dooo Dahh Zippity Ayy...MY oh MY, what a wonderful day!
Plenty of sunshine Comin' my way....Zippitty Do Dah Zippity Aay! WondeRful Feeling Wonderful day!" They had to do this while crossing hurdles like running on treadmill. doing pushups using the stepper etc. It was a hurdles texting round. What an innovation!!!!!!!!!!

Well and they had to get their spellings of Zippitty Do Dah Zippity right!

Hey, how about I can look at the cell phone, drink tea, listen to radio and drive car all at the same time? Is there a prize for using all 5 of your senses efficiently together?..How about I actually watch HGTV for 5 hours every 2 days and know all programs on it? How about I get an email, I call a friend to convey message, the friend pings another one on messenger and that friends leaves a message on faceobok for another and he sms's up the final person who was supposed to receive the message. Do I get a prize for being technologically so sound? How about sitting in theatre hall watching 3 movies back to back..
Cmon we can come up with anything for that prize money...How people just don't know how to utilize things for better purposes than mere publicity :(
Someone please tell me what is the point of this competition...and I dont have unlimited texting on my cell so please write to me ;)

Five points something....

This is the picture of the "Five Points" at southside. Well the name is definitely not "5 points someone" and am not trying to copy Chetan Bhagat's title. A snowy sunday morning in my sall little town makes me fall once again in love with it. It shows me love is not a feeling brought about by presence of someone, but definitely "something".. A place which sees you through different days studying at starbucks, catching up with friends, celebrating birthdays, reading a book or having breakfast on a snowy morning. A place which everytime reminds you in your heart of home. Everytime my cousin comes to birmingham he calls it "home". And I guess we all know why, the support of the place to keep us safe through are important journeys make it so. And that is the reason why sometime places carry so much more importance than people.
My parents have lived at a place for 15 years and so have many of my friends parents and my grandparents. Why do I still go back to see how big is my college building or whats the new color of my school building.
I experienced the first snowfall today, a first something again got attached to this place and it became an experience of a lifetime.
The white sheets of snow as far as I could see, the snow flurries hitting the face in zeal, the numb sensation of hands after the snowfight but the want to still not let off a picture perfect sight on camera, the taste of flakes melting in the mouth, the intense need to cover your ears tight, the thrill of sliding on snow, the appreciation of a slight color peeking through the white show, the gloominess of the weather done away by the strong smell of coffee and breakfast, the wishful thinking of a little warmth of sunlight but hoping it did not hit to melt away the ice,thinking why the red nose snowman in any shape still looks like he smiles, the plethora of footsteps marked in snow across the coffee house, the frozen water fountain across the church from the house, the snow covered cars driven on the road, why the only creatures without coats are the dogs and the birds,...(incomplete)

Acrylic and Oil

Misty Morning

Walking by the snowy road on a misty morning...
Feeling the dew on the face seemed like a long awaited dream,
Standing by the broken fence, to look at the trees yonder
I tried to figure out the shapes past the hilly border
The tree tops, the dew drops, the snow flakes, the mist,
there was something in the air today that took me adrift
I looked back at the path on as far as I could see
Traced my steps in the silence of the hour into the sleet
The feeling so intense was to not let go of that beautiful dream,
I stayed on till the sun rose and put a pearly gleam.

Dawn


Sun brought a new dawn , with bright red sparkle
The day was certainly on my side, with yet another one of natures miracles
The sky wasn't blue and the sun was still to be true
the warmth of the color shone on my cheeks too...
The mist began to dissapear and the snow to melt
my footsteps were now convered with lively grass blades
and as I looked again on the path I had walked
I saw my home sparkling in glee and the swing on the tree,
ready to embrace me back.

Fairness - boon or bane

Natural Selection : The famous term coined by Charles Darwin. Natural selection is the process by which favorable heritable traits become more common in successive generations of a population and unfavorable heritable traits become less common.
How is that related to fairness: When a couple, with one dark-skinned and one light-skinned partner, have a child, the child will usually inherit the dark skin. This is simply because nature makes the better choice. Yes, thats correct dark!! Fair skin has a lot more problems as compared to dark skin. Fair skinned people are more likely to have skin diseases due to the derth of pigment melanin. So obvioulsy unbaised nature makes the better choice.
Now for some facts that wiki has for fairness creams: Asia has the biggest market for fairness creams. Basically they are obsessed with white. Asian men no longer believe that fairness is only for women. Indian men, as well as their counterparts in other Asian countries, including Korea and Japan are turning to fairness cream. According to trade analysts, men’s fairness products is valued at Rs 30 million, and constitutes 35 percent of the market.
Initially the reason for dark or fair skin was related to kind of work people did, manual hard labour done by workers in fields versus indoor jobs done by more educated people, which soon led to caste distinction and later on to color distinction. Though India has come out of the caste distinction, its still stuck on color and the growing sale of fairness creams only helps to reinstate the belief.
Cmon, again which generation is it? We are not health consious as much as fairness concious. We do not live in a Utopian society where choices were made by the way things appear or look. We live in a modern world with a Utopian attitude. Thats was 16th century. We say Nature is the best teacher. So why not learn something from it?

Halloween

A good harvest of pumpkin and the right tools are the 2 basic neccessities for pumpkin carving. Good harvest because it means getting a pumpkin for 69 cents and I say right tools because I broke about 2 knives the last time I carved a pumpkin. But this time the tools,teacher,company and weather all being right, it really turned out to be fun.



Apart from being fun, it marks the end of the harvest season and start of winter and daylight savings. Some explainations I have heard about the pumpkin carving tradition is that, people used to light lamps during winter as it used to get dark early. Due to a good pumkin harvest, they were good containers to light candles I guess. Soon people realised of the fun shapes they could put on the pumpkin to make it look more ornate. And hence came into existence the pumkin carving tradition.
Sybollically:
The carved pumpkin lit by a candle inside is one of Halloween's most prominent symbols in America and is commonly called a jack-o'-lantern. Originating in Europe, these lanterns were first carved from a turnip or rutabaga. Believing that the head was the most powerful part of the body, containing the spirit and the knowledge, the Celts used the "head" of the vegetable to frighten off any superstitions.

As far as the wiki story behind it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween

Warli

I wanted to paint atleast one Warli design since the time my Aunt had used it on some fabric when I was young. It looked really intricate though it does not have a lot of shape or forms as you can see here. It usually converys a village scene. Warli art infact dates back to around 2500BC when people spoke this language a mixture or sanskrit, marathi and gujrati. Recently it came into fashion when modern homes wanted enthnic looks and brought in warli painted bed covers , cushions, table clothes or just hangings. That still did not suffice the need and slowly it got into the garment industry where "Tantra" and other kurtha making industries promoted it all the more.
Here, in the US people have a certain interest in mounting painted plates over the walls. The plates have pictures of seasons, light houses, animal paitings etc. I never thought that use of plate until I came here and it looks really good and they have extremely useful mounting accessories for this. One of my friends here wanted to give her house an Indian look and I thought what better idea than to merge the two :)...So there is my first attempt, though now I am trying a different color for the next one. This does not take more than 2-3 hours :D...well that is if you use acrylic for paint.