Art you can touch......

As I walked in to the crafts centre shack between the woods, very scenic and nostalgic! It was an experience one could never forget. we were holding hands, and I was describing the sky, the trees and painting many pictures in his mind. My words were creating that magic! we were lost in the conversation. I wondered, if I knew him before or I met him that afternoon in the woods.
Our walk to the shack continued, there were many others like him. Everyone, were trying to see beautiful things. Yes, they were trying to see and experience the nature, with the help of my words. They needed to be told, what I was seeing.
They were smiling away to the glory! I was happy, really happy. A lot of times we see and don’t realize the need to experience or cherish. On that day I realized that for people, who cannot see, life is an imagination. Imagination is the most gifted art in the world. On that day of art exhibition, when I was helping my friends at the braille institute experience art by feeling it, I made an observation. I felt that, when we can see it, we loose the art of imagining. As I explained various sculptures, which they could touch and know more about art, I was learning to fit the art in their imagination. They were literally and figuratively feeling it the right way. If there was a flower, they touched it and said it was a flower. I began to ask my self, that If I close my eyes and touch it, will I be able to describe, exactly what it is? May be not. I cannot, the reason being I choose to ignore imagining, because I can see!
With us, who can see effectively, It so happens that  we see a lot of things, we register few. I would like to bring advertisements in this context, We are bombarded with as many as ads possible on a given day. On the contrary, when we visit a shopping complex to buy groceries, we pick only those brands, which we are used to buying.
Children are supposedly the best at imagination. They have not seen much. When you narrate a story to them, they will imagine, every word of what you describe.
All is well, as long as we learn to appreciate what we see and what communicate what we believe in. Trip to this art exhibition, where in my friends at the Braille Institute, San Diego were allowed to touch and appreciate art, taught me the most important thing in life, which is to appreciate and enjoy art.

Baby Bump and More.....!

The nation has seen the most awaited baby bump in the last few days through photographs taken by journalists who sneaked through the big gates and climbed trees outside the very known “ Jalsa” , the Bachchan family home!. From the first bulge to the baby shower and Aishwarya Rai’s visits to Durga Poojas. They brought us every little detail. All for the sake of daily gossip. Hindi movies are  over hyped and make us believe in tinsel stories and reel life characters. We tend to forget that reel life and real life are distinct. It is very important to come back to reality. It does not matter to any of our lives if Aishwarya will bear a boy or a girl. Do we care if she decides the date of the birth of her child? I must admit to the fact that journalists have very efficiently done their job in “circling”Aishwarya’s every little bulge and how beautiful she looks in her pregnancy. The news tellers are merely doing the job of fairy tale telling and the people are busy listening to the fantasy stories about Aishwarya Rai, the ‘queen’ and the upcoming “Prince Charming”!!.

We all have forgotten the very essence of news. We have literally soaked ourselves in celebrity gossip. In this age of media on demand people have the choice of picking what they want to watch. Under these circumstances, we pick stories which reinforce our belief  that all is well with the world. We create a bubble around ourselves. Media has to vie for viewers’  increasingly fleeting attention spans. Hence, the media has metamorphosed into what I call the “in-your-face” style of story telling. Given the explosion of choice, media is succumbing to sensationalism. As a result of this, the same old stories about corruption and politics get lost in noise. Celebrity gossips are far more pleasing and attention seeking. Why not? After all, we all like peeping into someone else's life, especially a celebrity’s. Pick and choose has become the mantra everywhere. Its a phenomenon that has come with greater and easier accessibility to  media.

Babyrazzi in India has surely made place of its own. However, it seems that Babyrazzi is a trend coming from the west. Many stories have been written about Jennifer Lopez’s pregnancy. Speculations about boy/girl or twins were excessively made by the media. Even now, Mommy J Lo is in the news for celebrating Halloween with her kids.

As time passes, by reading  entertaining masala gossip about actresses, I am beginning to think that  we have spent more than enough time decorating our lives with a celebrity’s make up tips and diet schedules. It’s time to get real and look for news in the papers and not flip through the front pages and jump to page 3 for the sake of spicy news.

However, I leave it for the people to decide if it is right to ignore and forgo the real bad for the virtual good.