Lost in Green: Oil on Canvas

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Book Review: From the Holy Mountain

From the Holy Mountain: A Journey among the Christians of the Middle East by William Dalrymple
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

William Dalrymple is a brilliant and sincere author, who puts in a lot of effort to research before he writes a book and that is very evident in From the Holy Mountain.

The book itself is a treasure with great insight into Middle East and Arab. Dalrymple makes his journey through what was known as the Byzantine empire. Some may think this book to be prejudiced towards religion but this serves as an excellent history and travel book as well.

The amount of knowledge that I have gained about the history of three predominant sections - Christains, Muslims and Jews through this book is immense. I knew about Jerusalem being the main center for both Christians and Jews but never knew that Christainity is actually a religion which took birth and developed there as well. Today when we talk about Christian nations we mostly think of US, Europe, who would have thought that it all originated in Arab nations which are viewed as Muslim nations.

It's a pity that most of the religions in the world are influenced by each other and have similarities between each other yet we are increasingly getting separated by religion even in this modern world. None of the religions are at peace with each other. There are constant wars to destroy each others' heritage rather than develop our own. The real victims are those whose lives got caught forever in such war. There are people in places like Beirut who have been seeing violence right from birth and are still witnessing them at an old age. What a life it is where you live constantly in the fear of death rather than living life itself.

Completely impressed by Dalrymple's writing and researching style I have now picked up another book of his "City of Djinns" as a near future read.

View all my reviews

When Buddhism meets Cola - Oil on Canvas

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I love you - creativity

The only world worth living in, is of art, paints, music, dance, literature all in all a world where you create and not destroy. Creating a piece of music, filling a canvas with beautiful colours, writing an essay which touches others' heart is the most beautiful feeling and leads to a very pure, uncomplicated and simple life. Every time  I successfully publish a blog the feeling or happiness makes that day worthwhile, it counts. Every time  I finish a beautiful painting or a sketch I get the joy of having given birth to a child. Every time I hear good music I get lost in my thoughts and imagine the happiness that the lyricist, composer and singer felt on successfully recording the song and the satisfaction they got when audience applauded for it every time it got played.

I wish this world would encourage more and more individuals to crave for these joyful and happy feelings, but that is Utopia, in a world led by the green. Only if every parent could encourage their children to take their hobbies seriously and if only every adult could leave the temptation of enjoying luxury and enjoyed the feeling of satisfaction of creation. What many do not realize and what I realized lately that not all individuals in this world have been given the power to create and so the ones who have, should cherish and fight for creating beauty in this world.

Here's why I realized the joy of creativity -

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Time to adopt storytelling in mobile/online ads more closely

Most online and mobile ads, specially the mobile ads are quite invasive in nature where an ad interferes in the space where we are playing a game or browsing through some interesting content. As I watched the television tonight I realized that traditional advertisements are invasive in nature too. Advertisement is inherently invasive in nature, what matters is how you strategize to design the ad to engage your users. Sometimes, I think it is a bigger challenge to direct an ad which engages users within 10-30 secs rather than other content in the television space which last from 20 mins to more. What makes commercial ads on TV stand out is the story-telling technique which involves good ideas being churned out by creative teams and then translated into video by involving matured film producers. An example is the latest ad by ICICI bank called "Love Surprises?".

The story behind the ad or the concept is seriously awesome and it has been executed very well. The settings, characters and the background score actually captures the joy of surprises and rewards. Its a simple story, told very well. Vodafone had also captured the surprise concept very well through a series of ads called "Vodafone Delights".

From a consumer point of view, when such ads interfere your movie or tv-series watching, the irritation of having been intervened is far lesser than a poorly conceptualised or executed ad.

My opinion, if we are able to adopt such innovative ways of storytelling on the mobile and online space then the ads would not appear so invasive and may have higher returns as well. This however does not mean hosting video content in the ad space. The online/mobile advertisement players have to innovate to think of ways to tell their brand-stories in an interesting manner without making their content too heavy. Technology has a big role to play in the online/mobile advertisement segment and it needs to be integrated more closely.