Close your eyes for a moment..

She had come to see the flamingos. A cap protecting her eyes from the sun, a back pack slung across her shoulders –just like any other teenager who has just finished school. Only she had a Rs 25K camera in her hands and she was not accompanied by friends as is usual for girls of her age.
We got talking. I asked her what she wants to do now that her school was finished. “I want to be a photographer”, she replied,” but my parents are not happy with that, so I will do a course in computer hardware and keep photography as my side hobby. Everybody advises that.”
The innocence and naiveté in her reply has struck a chord with me. I haven’t stopped thinking about the power of dreams; especially dreams of a mind that is not yet shackled by the chains of practicality. A mind of that can dream doesn’t think of a degree in engineering-slash-medicine-management as the only gateway to a successful career (if at all it considers a career necessary). It doesn’t necessarily think of a fair-beautiful- educated- yet homely doll or a highly well qualified -working in an MNC with a fat salary package-pompous ass as a successful match (read catch). Come to it, it does not think that success is defined by being able to boast of how important you are to the organization; how much your work is appreciated; how successful and handsome/beautiful your spouse is or how your kids top in their classes. It doesn’t even think that success is important at all!!
A mind that can dream dreams of finding happiness instead of success; and of fulfilment instead of status. All of us have dreamt at some point in our lives. Yet, somewhere we lose our capacities to dream like a child who has no expectations to live up to.
It’s a part of growing up, I suppose. :-)

If art was in the cracks of a wall..

I am art.
I am a living being, I breathe, I smile, I strive, I tire and yet I hope. I am the ultimate creation because I am alive and I can feel it.
The swirls and loops in a piece of polished wood is art, the way light gets refracted by a diamond is art, the leaves on the tree outside my window are pieces of art, waves crashing on the golden sands are instances of art. Art is everywhere around me.

Art cannot be confined within a wooden frame and painted on a piece of paper with a few colours. Art cannot be bound in a volume printed as a string of words in black ink. Art cannot be imprisoned in a plaster of paris creation.
It is up to me what I choose to see as art. And I refuse to let art be confined, be a prisoner of ‘definitions’. Art is the abstract, the unfathomable, the familiar unknown something that everyone knows and understands in some form even though he doesn't realise it. Open your eyes to the world, to art!