What I learnt from Art school

My parents wanted me to soak up culture and the arts right up from a young age, so they had enrolled me at a local art school, way back in '02. It was run by Tinku da, a resident of the housing campus where I spend most of my childhood. It was (and still is) called "Chitrankan". I still remember the very first day, my mom had packed crayons, a couple of pencils, an eraser, a sharpener, and a big art book. I was always the hyper-active kid, and I raced to Tinku Da's house. The first day, I was taught to draw basic shapes, and to identify the different colours on the crayon set.

Courtsey: Stock Photo

As the course advanced, I learnt the different types of colours, my motor skills were honed, and the different effects brought upon by the varied use of different materials. At this point of time, I actually hated the course. Because it felt silly to sit for 3 hours and contemplate, design, draw, and colour pictures. We had theory classes too, where we had to analyze the multivariable styles of different artists, famous, infamous and not-so-famous paintings. Personally, I would have been happier to spend that time playing football (Sometimes I did).  I drew like shit, coloured like shit, and was always the impatient kid. Somehow the calm and quiet environment felt outlandish; this wasn't the playground, it felt like I was held back at a place surround with painting and psuedo-intellect (I was horribly wrong).

Youtube (Personal favorites)

I love Youtube. Youtube is my source of entertainment and education, sometimes both at the same time. There are an extraordinary number of videos and channels on youtube, and videos range from music to short films to Vlogs to serious lectures to the professional  to DONGs (Do it Online, Guys) to DIY help to......cat videos. 

I have a few personal favourite channels I'd love to share with you. Which are:


Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows:  This channel is one with razor-edged teeth, with the presentation of words which describe entire feelings. Words which can make you think, ponder (and regret?) and it feels like those trains of thought caught during a cold shower. Perfect relaxation.

Videos I got hooked on include: Onism, Sonder, Nodus Tollens, Oleka

VideogameDunky: Really hilarious reviews of video games. Dunky has a idiosyncratic voice which adds to the humour of his narration.

Deras Dam

I'm an idiot. A major jackass, and this post had been due for a really long time, but well, this is it.
One mundane afternoon Zeshan and I were got really bored, and decided we should pack our bags and head over to Dehradhun. Later, we joked about it and told Shubham about our idea, and one thing led to another and we prepared to visit the Chandaka forest reserve one night before.

We left at 6 o'clock (Couldn't sleep due to the sheer excitement), boots strapped and bags packed. We reached the required junction and hired an Autorickshaw. The guy was very friendly, magnanimous, pleasant.....BAH ! He was an utter pain-in-the-ass, (entertaining too), and constantly lamented the fact that the four of us should have got AT LEAST some women to hang out with and have fun. I really enjoyed the auto trip and the auto-walla, the bumpy roads, cows on the run, and the vivid trees, but in all brutal honesty, we couldn't handle all the BURN inflicted by the constant harangue of the auto dude. We eventually told him to shut the fadoodaas up.The road-trip to the forest was pure bliss. The lush green fields, the wind blowing through your hair, the hills looked like you could run and hug them, the wind breezing by, the little ponds with bubbles and fishes poking their noses, broken ruins, the wind whistling right you, more cows mooing away minding their own business.(Did I mention about the wind?) The weather was perf-wala-perfect. A thin, crispy cloud cover with the Sun playing the naughtiest peek-a-boo. We had a pit stop and refilled with some refreshments, and shared a coke with the auto-man. AND THEN HE BEGAN THE SAME OLD JABBERING. We had to tell him to stop again, and half-an-hour down the road, we reached the spot.It was okayish, I mean it looked okayish from the distance. We crossed the boundary gate and walked up (what seemed like a conquerable hill) and found what we had come all the way for.
It was vivid.It was serine.It was picturesque.I could write a million adjective and hundreds of synonyms of the incoming word, but in every sense, it was beautiful.

The banks of the reservoir

We stood there for 5 mins, and those five minutes magically became thirty. The place just took our breath away, and the romanticism of the place seemed to slow down time, just like time seems to slow down when you're hanging out with your lover. I'm sorry we didn't take too many photographs. Cameras couldn't do justice to what we saw. It was a check-dam, we were on top of the dam, and there was the deep reservoir, and it seemed to have a mind of its own. Out there, beckoned an hills waiting to be explored, and an island with really green trees and really green crocodiles. Yes, we had spotted crocs and we knew it. Too many dead wood in the reservoir? No way.

Attention Deficit Generation

The internet is a gigantic, it encompasses a large fraction of our lives, especially in the 21th century. Like every technology that has come along, the net has changed us in ways, we would have never imagined. But it does come with a large baggage of pros and cons, and unfortunately, attention deficiency is one of them.

Its not the internet who is at fault, it's us. Humans designed and made it, and we should blame ourselves for our own mistakes. There is a widespread 'disease' or 'change' in us, however may you'd like to define it. We are losing the ability to concentrate on reading text, read a book at lenght, or to listen at music at a stretch, or to focus on work (doesn't imply for everyone). Well, I figured out, that the 'instant' lifestyle we're perusing: instant messaging, instant search, instant replies, instant publication, etc, is changing us in subtle ways. We are unable to simply focus.

Inspirational ho-hum

A few days ago, I read an incredible blog post by Mark Mason (Here you go) about how your attention will be the skill in demand when you'll be at your working age. And the ability to catch one's attention is a key economic opportunity for the commercial and social world. Example? Magazine publication companies have a "attract time" of less than a second, and it can all make the difference between a sky high or a rock bottom sales. Of course it depends on quality on the content, but it need to grab your eyeballs before you can consider reading and purchasing. The attention span of humans, two generations ago were longer than ours, and the next generation has even a shorter one. The ones to survive and excel in this kamikaze (of attention and work efficiency), one should learn the art of finishing and focus on a task, not multitask around and keep everything in half eaten and unfinished.

MOOCs

Everyday is a challenge. We learn new things, and we practice relearning the old stuff, which can somewhat be boring but fun when you get really great at it. Taking an online course can be difficult, especially because we're all adjusted to the normal way of how things are: Newton's first Law of motion playing it's role in real life. Honestly, I've never done any online courses, so I decided to go ahead and try out a couple this summer, 2015. And things are never going to be the same again.

Well, it was a course on "Learn how to learn", a course based on cognitive psychology. It was  simple, but a eye-opening. We were taught how our brain and mind function (in layman terms, using a pin-ball machine analogy), and the fact that our brain and mind can be fooled by us to gain greater efficiency. It was a fun course, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. After 3 weeks, it was completed, and marks were assigned. I noticed, the course was extremely student friendly, easy to follow through and the presentation was immaculate. There were tests too, and a final exam, which wasn't VERY difficult. There is a ton of free academic material on the internet, and MOOCs have been helping students especially in the developing countries to get the benefit of quality education at the cost of an internet connection. Coursera, Edx, Khan Academy, MIT OCWs, Udacity, Open2study, FutureLearn, iTunes free courseware, Stanford free material, etc (There are way too many names to remember, so check the Wikipedia page). There's even more material available at Youtube, which has a diversity from fun,short, animated videos to lengthy but content rich selections.

Education knows no bounds and MOOCs have certainly helped spread wisdom and knowledge in a vivacious and easy way. It one of the greatest gifts the internet has given us.