“Every artist dips her brush in her own soul and paints her own nature into the pictures”- Nethra

Nethra is not her real name. She is Vidya Satish, a software engineer who works in Kuwait and hails from Chennai, India. Nethra is her alias, her pseudonym as an artist.

Vidya developed painting as a hobby, acquiring it during her early years from her mother who used to do Traditional Indian paintings with lot of craft work involved. But it was much later, only when she came over to Kuwait and settled in for a family life that she became aware of her talent as a painter.

As a self taught artist, she started honing her skills, with full support from her husband Satish, who is an engineer and who set up for her a website to display her paintings. Vidya (alias Nethra) first worked on oil paints, but later tool to acrylic paints as it gave her better scope for experimenting.

“Every time I sit with my paintbrush and wide array of colourful paints trying to bring life to the canvas, I’m transported to a different level of existence which brings a lot of peace within myself and wish that anyone who sees the painted canvas is taken to the joyful world filled with bliss.”

For more about Nethra and for a glimpse into the world of her paintings, click on to www.visakar.com

I am Prem Krishnan and I am indeed happy to be one among the first few contributors in homeofhobbies.com.

But I am confused as I don’t know where to start. This is because I just can’t point out a particular thing as my hobby. I am a person who is interested in a lot of things. In one way it can even be said that “changing hobbies is my hobby”.

Once when I was in the primary school, my mother showed some reluctance in buying me a carrom board. Guess what I did?! I made the carrom coins out of soft stones by rubbing and shaping it on rough concrete floor. That developed into a hobby. Later I began to make toy cars (without wheels) out of stones in the same way. Two years later, I found myself engaged in collecting matchbox labels. I had a thousand types of matchbox labels at that time and I used to exchange them with my friends.

From that time itself I was very close with nature. I used to watch and follow birds and insects in the evening to find out their homes. Once I saw a flock of birds in the late evening in my courtyard and I watched them till they settled on a teak tree. I waited and at night I went near that tree and lighted the torch. I was surprised to see all the birds sitting tightly packed in a row in such a way that a small movement from one bird will be known by all the other birds. That was the most beautiful sight I have ever seen. From that moment onwards I was longing for an SLR camera to capture such rare moments. But I was aware that my parents wouldn’t be able to afford for one.

I was a rather good reader too (I still read a lot). But I hated my academic subjects. I am a commerce graduate.  I still remember the definition of poetry by Wordsworth (“Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquillity”) which I overheard form literature classes, while I was in my commerce class. But alas I don’t even remember a single definition from the subject that I specialised in.

I loved nature and used to trek through forests. I love walking through the dense rain forest. We used to stay 25-40 kilometres inside the forest for two or three days at a time.

Later, life brought me to Middle East, to Kuwait, where I am at present. When I got a job the first thing I did was buying a SLR camera. After so many years my dream came true. I clicked and clicked and clicked and got a lot of pictures.  Some of them were real nice pictures (Hope I don’t sound vain, but I just loved those pictures). But one day I lost all my nice pictures when my hard disc got crashed. I felt so sad. Later I started a website of my own www.premkrishnan.com just to keep my photographs.  Now I rarely go out for photography because of my busy schedule and my main interests are now Yoga and Naturopathy. Since the last two years I am learning yoga and Naturopathy.  I wanted to write a lot about yoga and naturopathy but let it be later. I feel so sleepy now I have to wakeup early tomorrow. Catch you again later, bye…

(Prem Krishnan hails from Kerala and is now working in Kuwait, working as administrative assistant in the service department at Mercedes Benz Kuwait; he can be contacted at  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )