Visual Art and Culture

New year 2015 around the corner, people all over the world are eagerly preparing to celebrate the event in a grandiose manner. This particular celebration is gaining momentum every passing year. Invariably, the young and the old, celebrate the event with lot of zeal and enthusiasm. Each one plans to celebrate it in a unique way, quite differently from the last year. Economic liberty has gifted a new kind of life style for everyone. Young boys and girls party whole night swaying rhythmically to the tunes of the hybrid contemporary music, which is the fusion of east and west. People travel to exotic places with families and friends to make the moment memorable. People reserve hotels and resorts much in advance to celebrate the event. Suddenly, there is a shift in the life style and everyone is hankering to embrace it. With New Year stepping in, celebrations bring new resolutions with new hopes to progress and have success in everyone’s life. Some continue with their resolutions d...

There was a sparrow; it used to live in a small nest with …That is how a story unfolds.   Children listen to the narration with wide-open eyes and open mouth, half-eaten biscuits in their hands. Any slight sound would interrupt that absorbing moment . Narrate your stories to children and enrich their little minds. Narration is also an art. Words enliven the characters and take children into a fantasy world filled with the rainbow colors. Children wander in that fantasy world with birds, flowers and animals. Past, present and future all open their wings at time in this world. These small wonderful trips into the fantasy world help them to build their own creative and imaginative universe. Why do we tell stories to children? Are we educating them morally through the story telling? Are we introducing them to creativity? So many questions arise one after another. We start telling stories to them at tender age. In the beginning, the stories start with the moon and stars and th...

 Young waiters were running around non-stop, serving people at different tables with their favorite items. The atmosphere was very interesting and amusing. Families, young and old, had occupied lawn space. Different partitions provided different facilities to different people, who had come there to spend time with friends and families. The lawn space looked mesmerizing, the moon had appeared in complete circle, no artificial lights were around to mar that beauty. The people were talking in hushed tones with their favorite drinks in hand. It was a perfect scene. The milky white light of the moon had covered the whole area. Palm trees planted at the borders of the garden had stretched their shadows on the lawn. The light filtered in through the palm trees and fell on the grey-green grass, and created some weird design of light and shade. The winter cold was a little bit harsh. Therefore, the human bodies demanded something hot and spicy to ward off that chilling cold. An old ...

Hearing the chirping of birds at my windowsill, I got up surprised. I was thinking what had brought so many birds to my window at that early hour. I directed my look towards the window, but there were no sign of birds. I got up hastily and opened the doors of the window, and stretched my neck to have a look at the birds. Not a single bird was visible!   Was it a dream or hallucination? I murmured to myself.   Really, I was happy to have heard the chirping of so many birds at a time, at my windowsill in the early morning. Because of that chirping sound of birds, my morning seemed different and blissful.   However, it was confusing and disturbing.   After some time, I heard again the chirping of birds at some other corner of my house, as I was eager to know, I rushed towards the sound. To my utter surprise and disappointment, it was a ringtone from a mobile. It was a live-recorded version. I have heard and read that ringtones are disturbing and killing...