Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Fresh Breath of Life

During my younger days, I used to feel empty. I did not get access to internet until I was finishing school. I was brought up in a community where the arts and humanities were scorned upon and where the pursuit of studies in the scientific field was the epitome of knowledge.

It took me 24 years to realize that despite my "doing well" in studies, I was meant to learn the arts and humanities. Over the past few months, Coursera has breathed a new lease of life into me. The platform has given me access to structured courses of a high quality from reputed universities. I have already done 4 courses in Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology and History and I have signed up for more than 10 more such courses. 

It seems a long time ago when people thought that my math abilities meant that I had to be a scientist or a math professor at some university.The pursuit of studies in visual arts, music, dance, is what I look towards in the next few years.  I can sense that I will be living a very open-ended rich life filled with uncertainty about what new ideas will strike a chord with me.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Identity - Milan Kundera

Identity is a very intimate book. Chantal and Jean-Marc are constantly passing between real life and fantasy. The author in the end leaves it to the reader to figure out which part was real and which part was imaginary. Two of the major themes of the book are Freedom and Love. There are many significant imagery that the author introduces to increase the depth of the themes. One was the tree, the other was the bright red dress.