What's there in a name!

The answer is: 21 million dollars! As ridiculous as it may sound, but yes, the worth of art is measured by the name who possibly created it! That's the real world, my dear!

Few days back, it was found that a painting titled "Head of a Man", which since long had been marketed as a work of Van Gogh, and was apparently worth 21 million dollars, was actually not his work.....Fair enough. But what gets me is the sentence that has usually been following this news bite everywhere: that the painting is no more worth the prized amount!! Thankfully, WaPo has this redeeming quote from Gerard Vaughan in their coverage:

"It is very important to make the point that it's not a forgery," he told reporters. "There is no evidence to suggest that someone produced this picture ... to pass it off as a work by Van Gogh."

Valuing a work of art by just the "name" of the artist? Art appreciation assumes a totally new dimension!!

Wonderland and the old dreams.....

Few days back i finished this book "Hard boiled wonderland and the end of the world", a very surreal book by Haruki Murakami, my first book by this author. The book is too true to the title, and i don't mean it in a negative sense at all. It narrates two stories, from two distinct worlds. On on hand you have the really modern, fast paced wonderland and the other one is, well, the end of the world! The wonderland story is all about information wars, the strange new ways of protecting information, which use the most sophisticated device of all times: the human unconscious mind.....this world is not as simple as it looks! While the story in the wonderland is all about mind, the end of the world allows its citizens in only on one condition: that you have to surrender your shadow, the mind! The shadow then wilts away at some point, and that makes you a true citizen of the end of the world.....and while the shadow awaits its end, you would read old dreams: the broken pieces of mind and memory.....which ones belonged to someone.....

Two stories, two worlds, one connect!

Two sides of the brain, working independently?

Two minds within one?

Sounds lovely? Yes, it does! And that precisely is the surreal feeling i enjoyed the book for. The narrative is psychedelic, almost like a feverish dream! The only distractions to me, were, some of the lead character's obsessions (you'll know what i meant, when you read the book!) and the really show piece like female characters! The book could do without them (but thats my opinion). But you can easily ignore all that, and just enjoy the journey into these two worlds.....

The book has some crazy sounding, but interesting thoughts on mind! The author surely is fascinated with human mind.

The book has no ending.....or does it? You decide what to call it.....to me, it was an image of the beginning.....

and i think of Alice in the Wonderland.....