Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Women who touched my life and my thoughts!

Well these are couple of collages which i did some weeks back for Intl Women's Day. Even before i started working on this, i knew i would do a good job and was aiming at a prize for the collages. Incidentally the organizers of the competition made the job pretty easy bye giving the topic - Women who touched our lives! Being a capri, obviously, many women had touched my thoughts with their success. But these women had not touched my lives. My Mom, Sis, Aunt, Teachers, Few Friends and Colleagues had definitely touched my LIFE and they had made a tremendous influence on my life. I think this is the fact for every male human. I decided i will make a single collage with two meanings in it




  • An Inner Circle at the center conveying about the women who touched my lives and


  • An Outer circle conveying about the women who touched my thoughts!


Since the spouse or better half was also as important (if nore more important for some [:)] ) as others and since i hadnt had that experience as yet, i still decided i will make her presence felt in the inner circle. This way i arrived at the idea behind my collage.



I first downloaded images of Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams (kalpana was the one who had influnced my thoughts of aiming for sky high ambition)- their images were really very great. Then thought of Mother Teresa - incidentally i was influenced of her for only reason that she had influenced Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty - who has created a revolution in the Modern Day Healthcare in India. The Yeshaswini - Insurance programme for Farmers is his baby - though the normal public have no clue about it. Then thought of some modern day spiritual leaders, as i didnot want to have a communal angle to the collage i dropped that idea. Had the sense of proud on Kiran Majumdar, Indra Nooyi and Padmasree Warrior, thats how i roped them in. Then always being influenced by music i added Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhonsle. Though never had the opprotunity of listening to Gangubhai hangal and MS Subba lakshmi i knew they were much above than what lata and asha were to filmi music. Sania Mirza was indeed one of the recent success stories. Use to be agreat fan of Steffi Graf & Aish and to add little glamour i bought them in and added Sharapova too. I coined the words for each of the above category of women as below -





  • Sjy High Ambition - Kalpana


  • Compassionate Love and Service - Mother Teresa


  • Passion with Power - this was influenced by the image i got


  • Discipline with Thought Leadership (somehow i got these words for corporate women)


  • Dedication for women from Musical field


The above did not make the outer circle complete and so was wondering whom else to add in and so thought of Sonia Gandhi and added sarcastic words Innovative Leadership to be non-political about her presence. Thoughr of adding Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton, somehow missed them. Thus the outer circle was done.



Now the inner Circle - definitely i cannot put the real life characters here, but only the concept which conveys the person. This time I tried Google Text Search and ended up at National Geographic Site. That week they were airing programm on neo-natal care, there were pretty impressive images on a baby at various stages of life in the womb. I collected 2 of them and somehow was keen to have both of them. Then i got a good image of a younger brother being taken care by a sister. I was tired of searching for images. I had spent almost 8 hours on this (4 hours at office and 4 hours at home), i just wanted to finish this and crush into the bed. It was already 2:30 AM in the morning. Luckily i found a very good image of couple. I decided i was done. I spent another hour and half with Adobe Photoshop till 4 AM in completing the collage. I felt great after a long day work. But somehow the inner and outer cirlces were not connecting.



Spoke to some friends the next day and the day after. Every one said it was great but they were wondering what the collage was communicating. The weekend i sat for 4 hours and cut them into 2 images. The image out of inner circle came out quiet good.


























I found the words were also very much connecting the thoughts i wanted to convey

  • Precious Nine Months

  • Mother Care

  • Trusted Arms to Grow Along

  • For Journey called "Rest of Life"

As there was 'Seamless' word buzz every where coined a name to the collage SEAMLESS LOVE - which conveyed the same love being experience seamlessly experienced by a man from a woman either in the form of a mother or a sister or a teacher or a collague or a friend or a spouse. I was really excited how this whole experience of funny collage making experience had ended up. I became very emotional in the process of making this inner collage because everything was coming from my Heart. Also i realized what difference being passionate can make to the output of the work. Though usually am a very passionate person, offlate was a lesser passioante than i typicall use to be. I felt I was done with the collage making.


Just since i had this thought of finishing off the other collage also, and as almost 90% of the job was done. Somehow with very little interest i finished this off too.






























But i did a good job in adding the text while submitting

For Women who inspire my thoughts of unconventional thinking. Thinking, that is inspired by their success based on their

  • Compassionate Love & Service for Mankind
  • Discipline driven with Thought Leadership
  • Dedication for the Art / Creativity
  • Passion Powered to Excel
  • Innovative Leadership during Crisis
  • Realisition of Sky High Ambition
  • Hardwork

A Very HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN's DAY to the current Ambitious, Globally Connected Women Community!

I myself was amazed to see if it was I who has written all this. In fact i was impressed with the job done.

Finally, the result was - the second collage had got the second prize. [:)] What bothered me most (for a while) was how come a less-passionate work done, got better appreciation than the one which i had completed with more passion. Finally as the good old saying goes, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.

The grand prize I got was the sense of happiness, joy and passion i experienced in the whole exercise of doing it.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Wonderful thought !!!

IdeaNaren said...

swalpa english brushup madko or run spellchecker... dont waste time for intra-office events, aim big...

IE RAJ said...

@ BT
Thanks PAL!

@ IDEA
I knew someone would suggest this... [;)]
Will make it up...

AK said...

Hey Raj,

Its awesome to see Indra Nooyi, Kiran Majumdar Shaw and Padmashree Warrior in your photos. Gives a kind of boost you know. Thanks for a wonderful post :o)

IE RAJ said...

@ Aks,
Would be glad if this motivates atleast handful number of women to think to take the track of these Women!