Virtual Ramblings

I saw a movie on Sunday night, it was called “Dil Dosti Etc”, apt title, an Okey movie, nothing great, but now sure what made me take this from the movie. I finished the movie, and I was left with the topic of reality and happiness in my mind.

I am kind of getting lost when it comes to reality, is it that people find too much reality in fake world?, or too much obsessed with reality makes them see everything as fake in real world?. When people believe in something its so much real to them, the concept of good or bad does not apply to them, they just know its real. When people believe in something so much, when they see something other than what they believe, it looks so fake to them. Here comes the problem, with time when their belief changes, suddenly, something things which were real for such a long time becomes fake,

I have written in the past as how I have problems with forgiving and forgetting, sometimes I feel the others were at fault, for pushing me into a situation where I dont believe them, or the incident and find it really hard to forgive them.
Sometimes I feel its so much fake in there, I don’t want to remember that at all, making it more clearly etched in my mind.

I guess there are three kinds of people,
People who are always happy, still they know deep down that the moment they give a slip to their mind about sadness, they will end up realizing reality and the sadness with it.
People who are always sad, hoping that this would be totally risk free, making sure that they cannot get any more sad, only way from there is happiness.
People who don’t care if they are happy or sad, they don’t care about how they feel, they just react to life.

If you have seen the movie, and wonder where I got this from the movie, I am not sure myself. may be thats what the three girls symbolized to me,
one who was happy enough and always tried to forget her sadness.
one who acted sad just to hide how happy she was with what she got in the end,
the third one just reacted.

Reality as the two guys saw it. one who thought the world was fake, and he was trying to see
reality in what happens,
the other thought world was real, and finally gets disillusioned with fakeness.

Or may be it was just the parallel drama that was unfolding in ramblers mind as watched the movie …

Recently read an article in of the news papers, about how youngsters are leading an online life. All their social ties are through online, they prefer to communicate via emails, scraps, texts on phone, rather than hanging out with friends in person, slowly people tend to be spending more time in front of computer than actually living a life out there.

This reminded me of a post I had done some time back on my online life. I always believed that its not a problem with society but just problem with the growth and acceptance of technology in one’s society, After reading the article, the writer kind of convinced me that we are indeed losing social life because of the online endeavors. If it is good or bad is totally a different question.

Was trying to look at life at various ages, and how we have got influenced by technology. Again I would never say technology is bad, its a normal progression of intelligence and normal evolution of humans, but then it has changed few things, and all of it has not been good.

Children today spend a lot of time in school. The teaching methods have changed a lot, the use of computers in education start as early as 1st grade, children are easily exposed to computers, very early. When they come home, computer games both for entertainment and education have become very popular. Parents don’t have issues with children spending time on computer playing games, using educational software and so. Now schools have started providing assignments online, and submissions too, in cases, are online. The result is announced online too, so basically day to day activities involve so much use of computers and internet.
The lack of playgrounds and parks have contributed to this too, where kids prefer TV and computers to say playing common games in the neighborhood. Parents on the other hand, have had a total change in their schedule where they work long hours, and even after coming back are busy with either house work, or work from home. Them not having time to play with their kids means, they cannot take them out, so invariably kids find something in house that keeps them interested.

Moving on to the teenage bandwagon, their biggest muse these days seems to be a mobile phone, I am not sure what they actually have so much to talk about, but they spend hours together on phone talking, and when they are not talking they are texting.
I got hold of my first mobile phone, when I was way away from my teenage, but still had a muse for texting for couple of days, and that was all it was, and the muse went off soon. I do not want to generalize, but most of the teenage girls/guys and young adults, like early 20somethings are too much drawn into mobiles and spend a lot of time on it, rather actually going meeting friends in person and hanging out.
The other biggest influence on this age group have been the social networking sites like www.orkut.com and www.myspace.com. The idea of sending someone a small message through scrap which was almost alien to all of us some time back, has become so common in recent past. People tend to talk in scraps, when they have phone to call the other person, or just walk to their friend’s place. Now is this is an addiction?, is this the new social evolution is what something needs to be thought about.

Finally coming to my age group, middle twenties onwards, people in this age group seem to have a little more maturity and are not so much into mobile phones, the usage just borders around medium to low, may be for actual communication, or an occasional hello or so on. But for most of us around the world, blogging seems to be an addiction, the time we spend reading, commenting and posting is just enormous. I would have never used my computer as much as I have been using in last 1 year in which blogging caught onto me. Its not just blogging even websites like flickr for photography enthusiasts is also hugely popular, and people spend huge time browsing the photos of fellow photography fans.
So when you read so much through blogs, it kind of depicts an online personality of the individual, most do blog anonymous, so even without the actual background, we tend to develop an opinion based on purely what the person chooses to tell. I have met some amazingly talented people, people with really good perspectives, some kindred, some totally unlike me. Even before technology came in, knowing my social prowess might have not met so many different kind of people in person, or thats what I claim would have happened, in either ways, my online social life, if you wanna call it that, has been far fruitful then my offline one.

This is exactly what the writer was trying to prove, that social life has moved onto internet so much, and people are not even sorry about it. Reading the article, I felt a tremendous urge to have had a discussion with the author, and what I did, was write him an email

I used to say internet is not an addiction.

Couple of days back, Ideasmith who writes at The Idea-smithy had a post about privacy, which sparked off, a comment from me “privacy is never due to lack of people“, Which she found profound, and wanted to me to elucidate. This post is an attempt to do the same.

Before I start with my version, here is what the google told me when I searched for “privacy”
Answers.com defines privacy as “The state of being free from unsanctioned intrusion”.
This is something which makes the concept of privacy really subjective.

When we are amidst a group of people, a large crowd for that matter, do we feel intruded? yes, we probably do. What happens when there is no one around, do we feel private?. again, most probably we will.

Consider a musician who plays for himself, a person who thoroughly enjoys his music, and has extreme amount of concentration and focus on his work, now make him play at a concert, Do we think he is intruded by the people?, well probably not, were people unsanctioned here? may be not, but then he really does not care, he is so much into his music that he totally ignored the crowd. Do does he have his privacy? yes, he does, he was never intruded, his mind was so much focused that the intrusion by crowd never happened.

Consider a person who is really passionate about things, may be work, may be love, or even something as trivial as sports, now make him spend time alone, provide him privacy, no people around. Do we think he has no intrusion?. His passion always follows him around, even when he is not with his love, his partner is always around, if not in person in memories, or in mind, or in just the thoughts and dreams, so was it sanctioned ? no it was not, was he intruded?, as he was.

So why do we need privacy anyways, may be because we don’t like the feeling of being watched. So do we feel watched amidst a crowd?, do we feel left alone when there are no people?.

I have this bad habit of picking one person in the crowd and trying to observe him very closely, couple of days back in a traffic signal I saw a beggar, he was totally trying to catch people’s attention but nobody seemed to notice him, he was not spotted at all, there was a huge crowd, so was he handed an unwanted privacy here?, or was it the crowd who chose to have their privacy amidst a lot of others?

I try really hard to do something which is totally uncharacteristic of me, may be walk up to a stranger and begin a conversation, or may be try to slip in a crazy comment or two at a girl, but somehow I never get myself to do it, even when I am sure no one is there to watch me, so with no one around, what is it, that’s giving me a feeling of watched?, why cant I defy my rationale? why don’t I forget my consciousness.

What Is it that we do with privacy, what Is it that we want to do when we are not intruded, there can be only two kinds, something which is socially acceptable which needs to be done in absence of people, or something which is not socially acceptable and deserves lack of people.

Lets consider something which is socially acceptable, say may be have a deep conversation with your friend, with no intrusions from the outside world. Even though I have very few friends, sometimes I do tend to meet them in crowded places, say cafe. Now when I am with him/her, with lots of people around, do I feel intruded?, why should I, If we are having a meaningful conversation, concerning both of us, with both of us having will and consent to talk it out, I don’t think there can be any intrusion from outside.

so does it mean that privacy is never due to lack of people?, actually I take back my statement,
I would like to restate it as “Privacy may not be always due to lack of people.”

I believe privacy is due to lack of noise, now noise can be anything, it can be crowd, cluttered mind, literal noise, specific person, sunlight

There are some thoughts which don’t die easily, the one about the “tears” is one such. Even after few days I have been not able to focus my thoughts on anything else.

Some people are gifted, gifted with ability to get off the pain or sadness with a few minutes of tears. when people cry, I have seen they feel the pain to the fullest and let go off it. Two great things accomplished at one shot. Its extremely important to feel your emotions to the fullest, that’s one thing which makes letting it go a lot easier. When people cry, its not just tears that flows, its their mind that gets cleared.

As kids we have all cried, shed tears, we have done it for some of the most silliest things we ever wanted, we have cried in situations which can be hilarious when we think about it now. I once cried for almost a day long for my mom not letting me wear her lipstick. Isn’t that hilarious now?. I can still remember the robot toy in one of the show windows which made me shed almost a bucket full of tears, well that’s was almost true

As we grow up, what changes?, what changes that’s makes us shy from tears, shy from purest form of expression. Is it the shame?, shame of showing our weakness?. I guess for most of the people, including me, showing true emotions to others, is a sign of weakness. Tough men don’t cry, is still the most common feeling amongst us. Somewhere down the line, I think we lose the attachment to the emotions, simple emotions like happiness and sadness. Even if we don’t lose them, we never get to enjoy them fully. That’s the worst part.

As a kid when I used to happy, I would let the world know, If I win a contest or get good marks, its like a big banner up there for any person who visits our house. Well I may not like to brag in the similar way now, but atleast enjoy the happiness to the fullest. As grown ups, when get a raise, or do something awesome at work, meet someone special, or as small as birthday, do we ever laugh or enjoy to the fullest. Atleast I don’t. In fact I don’t even remember the last time I had a blast on my birthday.

I guess its not just me, nor just men. I have seen really emotionally numb women too. Emotionally numb looks like an insult, but it isn’t its just the way we people are growing up. Why is it?, why is it hard to feel the emotions, why do we find it hard to shed tears?.

As I say this I have met some really emotional men and women too, there is this cousin of mine, who is so emotional that, in a movie when the bad man dies, she cannot stop crying. I am really not making this up. Whenever we go to the movies, we all watch her instead :).

Again there is a whole new debate as to, not crying or not laughing may not indicate that the person is not emotional, well I agree with this. But then we all need ways to express our emotions, and what better than the age old common methods called “Laugh” “Cry”.

May be I am talking for/about a small subset of people, I really don’t know how you guys react to these day to day emotions. But as far as me, I have a long way to go.

Sensitivity is one of the topics, which everyone talks about, and very few actually know what it is about. Women are considered to be more sensitive, more than consideration they are expected to be more sensitive. Men on the other hand are considered to be less sensitive, or expected to be more thick skinned than their counterparts.

I was wondering how we consider the sensitiveness of the opposite gender, we have always men complaining about the simple things in life what women seem to identify and bring out. It can be the cleanliness, or the relationship behaviour, or as simple as dressing sense. On the contrary we have seen women complain of the insensitiveness of men, when they forget eventful dates, not care about what others think, not share much of the emotions and never want to lose an argument.

Personally I never thought if I was sensitive enough, but I did notice I was able to pick up when people are vulnerable, or if they were extra sensitive kind. I always thought I was a little too much involved or cared about what I do. It never struck me about various levels of sensitiveness. Recently was watching this program on discovery on this subject. It was all about men and over sensitiveness. I was surprised that I matched some of the features they mentioned and did some study on the google.

According to psychologist Elaine Aron, PhD,highly sensitive means people who are affected by and react stronger than most people to various stimuli. Individuals who are highly sensitive have nervous systems that are more easily aroused. They are more acutely attuned to themselves, others, and their environments, and consequently they are more easily overwhelmed. Interesting right ?? you can read more about what it means here

It seemed more like a taboo for men to be sensitive, or thats what seem to be the common opinion. I was sure many people would have done research on over sensitive men, so I went ahead and did some more googling to find about over sensitive men.

Peter on his page takes about Highly sensitive person and tells us
“used to bother me a great deal that I seemed, somehow, “different” from the rest of the world. As a boy and a young man, I had a slight “softness” in demeanor, and my approach to life. It wasn’t that I was being “effeminate” in any way, it was more a case of my being less aggressive and boisterous than my peers; of wanting to save the frog in the creek, rather than squash it; of wanting to work with my friends, rather than against them”
You can read the rest of the post here

I am not so sure If I qualify as highly sensitive person, I am not telling this because I don’t want to be known as one such, I am just saying because I don’t know If I am.
Finding about high sensitiveness made me want to look at the other extreme too, can people be very insensitive, and does it also depend on gender. Unfortunately didn’t find much about this subject. I guess nobody wanted to discuss about insensitiveness being common. I could find few things about how we need to deal with insensitive people thats all.

Anyways even after the information gathering, I don’t think I got my questions answered.
Am I more sensitive?
Are men not supposed to me more sensitive and emotional?, what do men think about this? and what do women think about this?
Are women always sensitive?

For both the genders, I feel they need not, and some are not.
And yes I do feel sometimes I am more sensitive than others given that situation. [both genders included].

He is happy and is grinning ear to ear,
He does not bother about what people think of him,
He is careless and totally wild,
He is ready to take any risk without thinking about the consequence,
He shares common likes with the masses,
He does show the emotion, he is feeling, on face,
He thinks naughty,
He speaks a lot, even with people he doesn’t know,
He enjoys himself in parties and gatherings,
He is not defensive and fights even with most powerful, knowing for sure it would harm him,
He does not hide his identity,
He craves for recognition and appreciation,
He lacks logic and thinks through his heart,
He ranks beauty above brains,
He is very difficult to meet,
A closer look confirms, he is just a very rare “ME”

Earlier last Friday…
place : cubeland,
scene : Me walking with a cup of coffee, catch up with this person
As I walked with a cup of coffee in my hand, I sight this person walking with a big cover in her hand.

Cut to few days earlier…
Finally After almost four years of work life, I decide to take a vacation. A big one,[more to come
on this one in couple of days], This vacation needed a backpack and I decide to borrow one from this person. Lets call her “Amigo”

A little history on Amigo…
She is seated very close to where I sit in my cubeland, and she has been around from the day I joined here. Thought I had seen her around and a couple of talks in between, never kinda hung out with her, nor have spent time conversing. Lately have spent some time with her, and kind of conversed too. But I didn’t have her number on my cell. Somehow I had not asked over the time, and there had been no need for it too. Anyways…

Focusing back on the scene…
I was hoping she gets the bag on Friday, so that I can get ready for my vacation, as all of this week I will be at work, and may not get time to pack. So I wanted to call her on Thursday evening and remind her, There I realized that I didn’t have her number.

fast forward to couple of minutes later…
[I forgot what happened in between ;)]
I ask Amigo, “Hey! whats your number?, I wanted to call you yesterday to remind”. And then it started. Amigo grinning from ear to ear, with a mischievous look.

*Me thinking*…..
oh oh, was I wrong in asking the number?. didn’t know, I shouldn’t have asked probably, But why is Amigo grinning? I looked around, Did I embarrass her or something, She does not look like that kind of a person. On a normal day I would have given up but decide to ask her number again.

Cut back to a month earlier….
I started getting these text messages on my phone, I generally am not so careful in maintaining the address book in my phone. So I thought this must be some friend of mine. I sent back “Who is this”,and no reply. I ignored the message. But then I started getting more from that number, not very often once in a while. I thought some guy is trying to send out messages in air, just hoping for a girl to reply back. The messages were decent forwards of some hilarious jokes, So I did not take any nasty steps. [Well "You" can debate on how nasty I can get]. The curiosity of knowing who the person was actually not much, I almost thought it was some desperate guy.

Cut back to the popped question…
As I ask Amigo the number again, she grinningly says you have it already, I thought she was
referring the one time I called her asking her friend her number, I hadn’t stored.So I tell her,
that. She grins again and tells me remember “Who is this?”

It had been a long time since a girl[Should I call girl or a woman :D], played a prank on me. The
last time was long time back it was more of a mischief rather than a prank. Well Amigo now I am not only scared but also careful around you

Recently there have been many articles in print, and also many posts about couple no longer wanting to share the bed. I had really held myself from posting anything on this subject. After reading so much which was totally against what I felt, I had to put this one somewhere, and the best place I could find was here.

I dont think I need to put up the disclaimer but still, As usual I would not be going into the physical aspect of this.[This does not mean I don't have opinion about that, but just not worth sharing]

I really don’t think there are any advantages of not sharing a bed, I might be a little biased as I have always felt bed is the nicest place to connect with even a stranger. But I really don’t see a reason why they don’t.

The most important reason seems to be, this helps them sleep better, this apparently helps people with different sleeping habits to enjoy a good needy sleep.
To me this reads as a failure to adjust to shortcomings of your partner.Isn’t relationship all about sharing space and helping each other out in their shortcomings?.

You may ask, why do people need to adjust, when they can individually lead a happy life. Well why do we need company in the first place, is it only for things which someone else enjoys doing with you?. For that we have many people who want to share joy and have fun. Isn’t a relationship meant to get better and comforting as you move higher than friendship.

One of the biggest things about sharing bed, is that you get to spend precious time with your partner, before and after sleep. In either case, this is a time when the environment and the mind is calm, and open to discussion. When you go to bed, you don’t go alone, you carry your dreams, worries, joys and sorrows with you, don’t you want your significant other to be part of these aspects?

When a person wakes up, he always begins fresh. Thats the time to improve relationships, I have never seen a person waking up with negative attitude in mind. I might have gone to bed with lot of negative thoughts, but when I wake up, I have fresh and exciting ideas, I would love to share that with the significant others.

Actually I really dont care if the person is significant other, or any person who is close to you, or you care and trust.There is no other forum better than bed to exchange ideas.

If couple can not tolerate sleeping, which is next to doing nothing next to each other. I am not they should be in a relationship.

Love to find out what others think on this.

I had been planning this for more than a month now, I knew it was such a small thing, but anything I do will anyway involve lot of planning, whether its worth or not is a different question.

Some months back I had discovered this cafe, which had live music and also a small collection of books, and immediately I fell in love with the place. I knew I wanted to go there, and spend some time. As usual lack of company had made we decide not to go there. But yesterday I was so bored that I decided to just go out there, though alone just to check the place out.

I am not new to enjoying the hangouts alone, In fact that was when I started to do what I want to do, rather than what people wanted me to. I had developed really good rapport with strangers and could walk into any conversation easily. I used to love that “me”. I was not, so comfortable doing it here in Bangalore,because of more or less fear of known.

I reached the cafe at around 7:30 PM, firstly I was disappointed as there was no live music yesterday, but there is something in the smell of the fresh ground coffee, which made me enter the cafe. I looked around I saw like 3 couples, 2 large groups of girls, they seemed to be in late teens or early 20’s. And were chatting at the top of their voices. I directly went into the book section. There was no one there, Kind of eased me into the cafe.

After buying couple of books and paying for it, I started thinking. Should I Stay here and have coffee when I read or just go home. I looked around once more there were hardly anyone who had come their alone. I felt a little odd. But decided that I will drink just one cup coffee and go home. So I ordered a latte and started to search for a place to sit.

One of the biggest problems in hangouts in Bangalore is lack of planning for singles, they do not have bar stools or even small corners where we can settle down. I cant blame them for not planning well for an offbeat customer like me who goes to their cafe once in like a year. I ended up temporarily sitting on a large sofa, that was the only empty seating place.

By this time I had become totally self conscious and started looking around, is someone looking at me chuckling slightly at being lost?, or is someone trying show me to their friends like the Dilbert looser comic strip,. I did see couple of raised eyebrows and couple of stares. By that time a coffee table became free. So I decided to sit there to avoid public attention.

I really don’t know what I was thinking when I shifted. Let me tell you a little more on this new table of mine. It was right in front of the entrance, i was facing it, to my right there was this huge group of girls shouting about how they need to be in touch after college. So there I was sitting, trying not to show them they might end up like me , after few years after college, and also not look like a fool to every couple/group that enters the cafe. Sometimes I thought the owner might ask me to go home, as people coming in seeing a lone guy might decide against entering :).

The latte came, and I took out my book. I had just bought that book, I just wanted to do something while drinking coffee and had planned to go back as soon as the coffee finished. I started to enjoy myself. I liked the book and the music playing in the stereo, even though I could here most of the conversation that surrounded me initially, later I could concentrate on my book.

I didn’t realize when the coffee got over. I was 50 pages into the book when I realized its almost 9, I had spent like an hour there just reading and drinking. I did look around in between whenever new people came in. But I was not getting embarrassed at all. I had hoped to meet some nice people there. Thought that didn’t work out, I really liked picking up my something which I had left on April 7th 2006. The last day I hung out alone in a bar.

So now that I am back on my own. I think I will start the prowl for better places.

P.S. Contrary to the popular belief that I went to meet “someone” there or hoping to meet
“someone”, I was just trying to do what I used to do before and was missing :).

Since I am gonna be gone for quite some time, I thought why not relive the posts from 2007 which I really enjoyed writing, one from each month.. so here it is from the month of January.

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Its always nice to know what you are. But do we really know what we are?, I am not so sure. So what would you say, If some one asks you to Identify yourself, What I mean here is, How would you Identify yourself. Name is the last thing I want to be my Identity. What have I done or what I have achieved which can be stated as an identity. Its a tough one to think about.

Does my profession become my Identity. No, I am not a Bill Gates to make my profession Identify me.

Does my academics Identify me, No again, I am not some Einstein here where my inventions speak for me.

Does the wealth Identify me, No not even close, I am not a multimillionaire for money to become identity

Does my behavior, values and religion identify me, I don’t consider myself extra ordinary in those fields either.

So what it that, that identifies me? This ones a toughie
So does this mean I am going through an identity crisis, hell No.
So does this mean mediocre person do not have a strong identity? Well not so sure here. I feel yes they don’t and some times no they do.

Problem here seams to be the approach I have used to Identify myself. One should never be identified by comparison. Each one will have his/her own Identity, When you try to establish this in comparison with others, a stronger quality of one person might overshadow the subtle differences. So let me re look at the Identity

I am hard working and I have enough courage and ability to adopt to any profession, Does this identify me? I was good enough to recognize importance of academics, and also the fact that never I should repent in life that I did not take my academics seriously, Does this Identify me?
I tried to innovate and make my job easier both at work and in day to day life. Does this Identify me?
I make enough money, to realize its importance, and thus more importantly knowing how to spend it, Does this Identify me?
I have developed strong values, and make sure my behavior is not affected by circumstances and outcome, Does this Identify me?

I think it does. It might not distinguish me, but surely Identifies me. Here “Me” could be anybody. So the whole problem seems to be due to lack of knowledge about difference between Identity and Differentiators.