Leisure

This is a watercolor painting on paper, edited just a bit to sharpen the scanned picture.

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Conscience

Listen to your conscience. It is the only way to prosper, because it is God talking to you.

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Set the Right Path

Everyday we write up the history of our future. What we do today, we see its reflection tomorrow. So today is the day to select the right path, do the right things and stay focussed on the brighter things of life. Then only we can leave a brighter and healthier world for generations to come.

Click here to read more about Chandra

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Renewal of Faith and Belief

You may lose some of your old faith or belief at certain points of your life. Don't allow it to break your heart. New faith will evolve out of it. It will come from within. If you lose some, you also gain some. Life goes on like that.

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Right Selection

If Sir Issac Newton had tried his hand in cooking, he would have surely become one of the greatest cooks of all time. But then we won't be having the Laws of Motion. So one must try to make the right selection as to what use he will put his time, experience and intelligence to. One's claim to superiority depends upon the use he has put to his time, experience and intelligence.

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Open and Positive

Keep your mind always open and positive. One Day you may see something so wonderful as no one has seen before, experience the happiness no one has dreamt of before.

If not today, some day God will surely bless you. Keep yourself prepared for that day to hold it for good.

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Amidst Nature

This is a watercolour painting, done in the year 1982. The place seemed to be very peaceful. A peaceful place is any artist's paradise.

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Confession of an artist

I like very much to sit in one corner of my room and try to visualize things. I know most of them will never be materialized; yet it gives me a lot of pleasure. Not that I never have the desire to move out of my corner at times. But not for long durations. I have duties and responsibilities to perform. I am surely aware of that.

The corner of my room I need to calm down myself. Inside me my mind wishes to work alone. Crowd makes me feel disturbed. All my thoughts get scattered and go astray. I cannot concentrate on my work. I feel apprehensive. So I need to be alone at times according to my wish, though not always, to think clearly, to look at my surroundings vividly, to understand nature perfectly, and express my thoughts distinctly. The expressions of my thoughts, in whatever form they be, should reflect the knowledge and vision that I have gained through imagination, observation, experience and wisdom. Not that I do not like company of other people. Only my mind needs some free space to work out things clearly.

When I feel sad everything becomes too heavy to bear. I feel depressed. On the contrary, when I am happy I feel I can pull the entire burden myself alone. I feel happy just as I accomplish a task, just as I take a step forward. Then I feel I must accomplish more such things and I will surely succeed in my mission.

Overall I surely feel that my mission will be successful. Some people will surely remember my works. Just then I feel I must keep up my good work. That helps to keep me right on track. I know I have to keep on trying to accomplish my mission alone. Even if I succeed a little in giving something good and everlasting to mankind and reveal the eternal truth, and thereby serve my God, I shall not feel that my life has been wasted.

Translation into English based on the Bengali works (essay) of Rabindranath Tagore

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The Late Evening Glow

One must have seen the evening glow of the sun when it sets. Initially the glow is yellow in colour. Afterwards it becomes slightly orange. It is that late glow of the setting sun that I have tried to capture in this painting. Don't miss the hut and the trees along the horizon. This is a typical village scene in India.

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How to motivate oneself with the most basic principles

Idleness makes life dull. One must indulge in whatever good work one can lay his hands upon. Blessed is he who has found work. He needs no more blessing. If one has no work in hand and feeling dull about it, one must write. Write whatever one can. If one cannot write anything, then even, he can write that he cannot write anything, and possibly with the reasons why he cannot write. That will do.

Reason to do work: Private or public. Private reason is doing something because one has to, mainly to earn his livelihood, or at times, to get out of idleness.

Public reason is doing something on the public sphere because one opts to improve one's private function. Although someone may find his job or function disagreeable, the task must be completed for society to flow consistently.

1. Intellect: It is a property of the mind that improves one's overall ability to perform better. It involves understanding, communication, learning, learning from past experiences, planning, and problem solving.

2. Reasoning power: This tells us how one builds up his logic to draw conclusions or arrive at decisions. Such decisions must not be impulsive.

3. Wisdom: It is how one understands and realizes people, entities, things, events, happenings or situations in order to choose or act consistently and produce the optimum results by spending a reasonable period-of-time and amount-of-energy. Wisdom is the ability to effectively and efficiently apply perceptions and knowledge and produce the desired results. Wisdom also includes comprehension of what is true or right.

These three will help one to ascertain what is a good work. Subjectively, Work may be divided into two basic parts,

Physical work and mental work.

Physical work involves our body more, while mental work involves our mind more. Too much emphasis on any one of the two is not good. Too much of physical work makes the body suffer. Too much of mental work makes the mind, and consequently the body, suffer. One must strike a balance between the two, as mind and body are highly interlinked.

Physical work improves one's nervous system and precision power, which in turn helps the brain to think better and perform better. Balanced improvement of these two helps one to think more analytically and perform with greater precision. Knowledge goes a long way to help one in this regard.

One needs rest after work. Again, rest also may be either physical, or mental. Mental rest is best achieved through sleep. Some light entertainment can also bring mental rest. That improves the involuntary systems of one's body, thereby improving one's physical ability to perform better.

Driving a screw through the wood can be of great help to improve one's involuntary systems. Mending a torn book may be another example. Writing is also a great exercise of the brain, as well as of the hand. Writing improves one's rhythm and poise. One must write at least two pages everyday. Taking dictations from someone and improving one's writing speed does a world of good. Take up any job you find handy, even if you do not find it joyful. Keep engaged. Tomorrow you may find another job, which will be very much to your liking. In life, most of the times it is not selection of the best, but it is rejection of the worst. Remember this.

After all the theoretical discussions, we now need to come to the point. Let us take up the most obvious question. Why are we lacking in motivation? What is keeping us away? We can devote al our time, brain and energy to do something only when we know that we will be rewarded adequately.

1. Money is a big motivator.

2. Ambition is also another great motivator, which some people have very little, while some have immense. The majority falls in between.

3. Doing something for others works as a big motivator for some people. They do not find joy in doing something for his own. Are you of this kind? Ask yourself and recognize yourself. It may be a loved one, your entire family, or the neighbourhood, or an even bigger group.

4. Creating something of everlasting value works perfectly well as a motivator. Creativity motivates us immensely.

5. Desire for fame, honour or power also work as good motivators.

Just try to find what motivates you the most. Once you find it, your job is half done.

6. Lastly, try to drive away memories of past failures from your mind. That kills motivation. No harm if you have failed in the past. That does never mean that you will fail this time also. So drive all such thoughts away.
If we can clearly see that by accomplishing a task we can reach a certain goal, obviously we will devote all our energy towards it. So we must first try to find the goal, the aim or the objective.

Positive Thinking: One must have the inner urge to take up a job. Then, one must think positively in so far as finishing the job successfully is concerned. Positive thinking will bring in courage. Courage will bring in faith. Faith, in turn, will bring in confidence in oneself. Confidence will boost up one's overall skill and ability to perform better and better. One's chances of success will improve dramatically.

Courage is the sum total of one's intellect, reasoning power and wisdom. These three makes a person autonomous. Autonomy gives courage. When a person becomes autonomous, he attains maturity, and gets enlightened. One must also never get afraid to think about oneself. It is not selfishness in any way, as long as he thinks about other's well-being also.

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Sitting Lady

This is a pencil drawing done on water-coloured paper in 2008. Some enhancements have been made to darken the pencil lines.

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The Passenger

This is a pencil drawing done from a real life scene. I kept the details in mind and did this after coming back home.

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Creativity

Creativity presupposes the existence of some philosophical thoughts, and philosophy begins in wonder! It begins at a point when one starts thinking that he knows nothing much about anything. That opens up the mind and one's mind becomes ready or hungry to acquire every knowledge.

However, Mere acquisition of knowledge is not all. Knowledge without analysis and synthesis is of no use. There must be an element of creativity in it, or so to say, an element of building up something new out of the old in it. It is imagination that fuels creativity. With an imaginative mind one can process or analyze the knowledge and improve upon it. Oh! no, all this is too down to the earth and brief. All these we all of us know.

Let us have a nice journey to the bottom of this aspect. Actually the very essence of philosophy lies in being able to keep one's thoughts and feelings very simple, very elementary. So one does not get mixed up, and proceed to solve the most complex puzzles of life in a step by step manner.

God has sent men to this world filled with an ability to understand the real truth lying at the bottom of every entity, event or happening. One's conscience is really the presence of God in him. One must never make a mistake to know His existence within him in the form of his conscience. The Almighty gives one everything he needs to lead a healthy life. Surely He gives all that is necessary for a person to live, otherwise how does one survive and carry on with his life and prosper even ?

But most of the times one grows impatient if the Almighty makes some delay in giving something to that someone. One is never satisfied with what one has got. Even after getting it he keeps on asking for more. Comfort or craving for it engulfs one. Even if one does not have enough of something, one must not blame Him for not giving enough. One must know that He has to look after every living being of this wonderful world.

Hidden within that scarce means or resource, that He has given us, lies a mine full of treasure. One must accept what is scarce gleefully, and he will get more in future. If one tries to grab bigger portions without being satisfied with what he has, one might have to lose the small portion that he today possesses. A sense of satisfaction must prevail at every stage. In abundance creativity loses much of its essence. Every grass root cannot grow up into a paddy plant. It will find it impossible to achieve. This impossibility is nothing but natural.

However, one must keep his mind open to achieve and attain more. One must always be well prepared to toil for that. One must never think that something is very easily achievable. This makes one less and less creative. If creativity dies then all laughter, joy and merriment also vanishes. There must always be some unfulfilled areas in one's life, some scarcity, so to say. Some areas must be dark. One must preserve those unfulfilled areas, those scarcities, with utmost care. Else hunger for knowledge, imagination, creativity, laughter, joy and happiness will vanish.

Scarcity gives birth to and also nourishes one's creative aspects, which in turn keeps life flowing. To put it in a more easy way one can say that necessity is the mother of all inventions, which in turn brings prosperity through creativity.

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