Virtual Ramblings

The topic over at skittles today is Wonder/Wander. I chose tails, that means wander. I would like to warn the reader upfront, mainly because this might be one of the most boring post you will ever get to read, something which is very naive and a re-creation of what I have heard and felt over the years. What I am trying to say is that, reader shall continue reading at his/her own risk

Have you ever tried to relax, what is it that you do to relax?. Before I hear the answer, let me tell you I am not talking about physical strain here. How do you relax your mind?. This is a question a doctor asked the open audience in a lecture on how to avoid stress. What followed was a normal discussion about eating healthy, taking break etc. What I took home from the lecture, is to sit alone and trying to concentrate on relaxing mind.

As I sat in my room, on the floor, leaning to a wall, with my head stiff, and my back a little arched. I began to concentrate on the middle of my eyebrows. I was finding it extremely difficult to stop my mind wandering onto different thoughts. So I fell back to the age old principle of using a placeholder to focus your mind upon. I started chanting a word “OM”, I found the word too cliched so I thought I should be able to do this with any word. So I chose “RAMA”, mainly because that was one thing I spotted outside my window. I began to chant RAMA very often, and my mind which was supposed to relax was now focussed on saying the word “RAMA”.

I was trying to concentrate on the word RAMA and was trying to make sure my thoughts dont stray on any other thing, all the time I was thinking of only thing “My thoughts should not stray”. I was saying the word RAMA but my thoughts were about making sure I don’t think about anything else.

After about 10 mnts, I realized I had really not accomplished what I wanted to do, thats making sure not to think about anything else, that itself had manifested into a thought, and my mind had wandered off.

Now I understood what the instructor meant, when he said concentrate on something. So I began to continue with the exercise, this time after a seconds of absence of thoughts my mind wandered into the area of my work, I was thinking about all the things I need to finish the next day at work, I began to think about a piece of impact I had identified long time back and had totally forgotten about, I began to think about an incident on that day when I had thought about this impact, how humiliated I had felt when my proposal was rejected, only later to be found as a valid solution. How I had liked a white clad woman in office that day. Suddenly I realized my mind had wandered away, and I had to force my mind back into concentrating on chanting word RAMA.

This time I could do more of it, before my mind wandered again. My mind went off to a childhood memory where I used to hate eating a particular dish my mom used to make, how I totally relived that hatred when I mom made the same dish today, I began to remember a friend from my childhood who used to get some weird but tasty stuff for lunch, and we used to share the food. I began to remember the color of the uniform we used to wear back then, and the teacher of whom I was a favorite. Puff, back to the original goal, I am supposed to concentrate not wander.

After several such rounds of concentration and wandering, I realized one thing, what I was able to achieve was clear of thought whenever my mind wandered, I mean I could really solve many issues easily this way, even though I was OFF from my original goal of not wandering, I was able to think and come up with solutions to many problems of complex stature. Also I began to notice, with practice the gap between thoughts was also increasing, I guess thats the period of pure silence, the gap between the two thoughts, more I could prolong those, more I could relax. Its amazing how much silence can contribute the thoughts that are about to follow, and how the silence of the mind totally rejuvenates your mind.

Try the technique and let me know the results …..

As he walked his life
with his mortal body,
living life,
There where times when voice
became clear,
The voice from within, screaming
“this” is the right path
“she” is the right one
“that” shall make you happy.
Deaf, that he had turned
Chose to ignore.

Voice is back!,
Will it get a second chance?

———————————————————————————–
The topic over at writer’s island is “Second Chance”. I always had a thought that its not life which needs to give us second chance, because it always gives us lot of chances, its us who need to give life a second chance.

Random Guilt:
One of my not so friendly friend had an unfortunate event over the last week, by “not so friendly” I mean someone who I have never been able to tolerate much, somehow I have ended treating the person as one from a non existent rival camp :). I kind of had warned him that it might happen, and it did happen, now there are chances that it might turn worse. Now whenever I think about the incident and the possibilities in future, I feel sad for that person, and sometimes I feel person deserved it. Amidst all this, I kind of hope nothing worse happens to the person, the question thats haunting me these days, is why am I feeling this way?, why am I wanting good for him?, is it because of a guilt that once upon a time, I wanted something bad to happen to the person?, or is it because of a fear of being watched? I mean am I feeling this way only to please the Guy up above so that he does not give me any problems?.

Random Faith:
Suddenly my faith in the all powerful person up above seems to have increased. There is an old saying in kannada “Sankata bandaga venkata ramana”, which means that only when there is a problem we seem to remember the GOD. There have been no major problems in my life as such right now, but even the small issues I seem to be falling to a path of faith in the unknown power and more importantly blind faith in praying. Do any of you go through these spells, where your belief in GOD for no reason shoots up?, or for that matter belief in any other super power. I think when we enter a stage where there is hardly anything we can do to control something, we just hope that someone/something will control the things for us.

Random Realities:
It all started when my friend P called me up last sunday late at 10:30PM, I had gone to bed at 9:30 itself so, I was well into my deep sleep. I woke up and spoke to him for about 30 mnts, but my sleep cycle got screwed, no I did get sleep afterwards, but somehow a mental feeling of inadequate sleep was with me all last week. I was not getting proper sleep, I ended up waking up 2/3 times in almost all nights this week, all this meant that my evenings used to be screwed up, with a sleepy me, cribbing about anything and everything at home. BTW does it make me sound like a cranky toddler?

Random Observations:
I generally loose temper very easily, I think one of the reasons for it is lack of patience. Last week when I lost temper couple of times, I was kind of analyzing what could be the reason for that, I was surprised to find out that, on all that days I was very hungry, I mean as soon as I come home from work, I am generally very hungry and I will be looking forward for my dinner, this is the time I am most vulnerable, if someone tries to mess with me at this period, I very easily loose temper. As soon as I have my dinner, somehow I am a lot more calmer, and I tend to ignore smaller irritations. Have you ever felt this?

Random Coincidence:
Thursday morning, as I was getting ready for my breakfast, as soon as I saw the dish, the only person who came to my mind was my friend S, it was her favorite dish, so was thinking of the days when I used to pack her some of it. After breakfast I totally forgot about this, only late in the afternoon until I got a call from S, saying she is back in town for a day. Busy schedules for both of us meant that we could not meet, but still we did have couple of long phone calls. What a coincidence right?

Random Foodie:
Looks like my stomach is really upset with me for not providing it the usual foodie stuff, so I decided to do something about it, Wednesday evening I gave my stomach a ride towards a local chat corner, and it was treated with couple of plates of masala puri and pani puri. Friday lunch was at kundh in 100 ft road, where I tried a real nice curry, and the Indian garlic bread was awesome. Sunday morning was a treat with Masala Dosa..Foodie days are slowly coming back.

Random Pursuits:
Last but not the least, this week over at pure pursuits I was talking about platonic friendships, I have spoken about that many a times over here too, this time it was from a   different point of view, something that got sparked due to a article in one of the newspaper. Here it is “Platonic, what’s that?”

Thinking Aloud who writes at Aalochane has tagged me with a meme, which is about recollecting thoughts from the past, Trying to recollect the posts you have written and reliving some of the thoughts related to family, friendship, yourself, and your love.

I think I had seen this meme on one of the blogs before, and I had liked it instantly, mainly because its more about reliving those moments when you wrote those posts. So for a change I chose to do the meme on the same day as I am tagged :).

For the readers, here are the rules
“Post links to 5 of your previously written posts. The posts have to relate to the 5 key words given : family, friend, yourself, your love, anything you like. Tag 5 other friends to do this meme. Try to tag at least 2 new acquaintances so that you get to know them each a little bit better.“

Here they go …

Family.. I think one of the things which should be and will be in all of our minds is family, actually I was searching through my older posts, and I never thought I would not find posts related to family in there.
I remember this post which I had written about parenting, I am not a parent, but it doesn’t stop us thinking like one, does it?, heres “parenting blues from a non parent.“.
There are times when I totally feel a disconnect from my family, and its followed by a realization and getting back into the family groove, one of those times over here at “family lost and found“.

Friends…
I have had very less number of friends over years, but the ones I have, have been really close.
There have been times when I have wondered where it all starts, like here “lets talk about beginnings“.
There have been times when I have wondered about how friendships have been under confusions over years when gender is involved, “friendship talkies.
“
Yourself…
Looks like all posts I write, somehow relate to this topic in a way or other :). I wish I could put all the links here..
I have some real strong attachment to this thought, mainly because this is the first time I wanted to write something. This is the first time I documented the thought that was going through me. Here it is “Inspired by the 2 way“
I have written for prompts over time, and one of the posts which I really liked was about writing letters, I think this was something which I felt for “Times when I wanted to write a letter“
I have never shied from admitting I tend to be over sensitive, and there were times when I have thought more about the topic like here “I am talking sensitivity today”

Your love..
I am really apprehensive when it comes to this topic, mainly because I feel my brand of romance or love is something not the typical types, or may be not even something that can be considered as love.
I once spoke about the music of silence between people here at “Silent strings“.
There have been times when I have been expressive, about how I see ‘her’, what I want ‘her’ to be like, for example here at “she“.
My ideas of sharing romance with a partner was once upon a time expressed over here at “bed share story“.

Somehow did not find the 5th topic on TA’s blog, so went ahead and chose something which always finds mention on my blog.
Relationships…
I once wrote about equations, and I was really impressed with the title I chose..”x2 + y2 = z2“

I am supposed to tag 5 people, but I am really bad at this, so I think I am gonna bail out on this one :).

Should we judge our capability based on what others are capable off?. If I have a master’s degree, and you have bachelors, and the he just has a degree, does this mean I must have more capability than you and him?. If I am doing the same work as a person who has done Bachelors in science, than does it mean I am not working at a level much lesser than what I am capable of?. Should one always work at the brim of their capability?

It was a long tiring day at the office for Ashwin, he just wanted to get out of the place and reach home, a plate full of delicious dinner and a good night of sleep is all what he wanted. Ashwin quickly walked out of his work place, to make sure that no one else catches him for some other work, he came out and stood at bus stop waiting for his route bus to come. Unfortunately the bus was not to be seen for long time, only after a wait of about 30 minutes his bus came and rushed inside a slightly crowded bus.

This was the peak hour of commutation, so the bus was almost crowded, and Ashwin did not
find himself a seat. He quietly leaned to a pole, with his drooping shoulders and head sunk low between them, just barely managing to stand. The bus moved forward and within no time was in the next step. This one was a bus stop right in front of a college, so a huge gang of college going people entered the bus. Ashwin didn’t even look up, he was not at all interested, he could hear the loud voices of excited students, talking about the days events, discussing movies and lecturers and what not, girls giggling and talking. Now Ashwin had a little interest he wanted to look up and see if there were any good looking girls around, but he was too lazy to look up. So he lifted corner of his right eye to look around, and gently looked around, he spotted on girl whom he thought was cute, and had a lovely smile, he was in too bad a mood to even think on those lines. He went right back to his semi sleepy state leaning to the pole in the bus.

Added to the tiresome day, Ashwin had to live with a bad cold from last couple of weeks, it was much better compared to the previous week, but still he had a occasional sneezing attacks, where he ended up sneezing continuously for minutes together. Ashwin, could almost sense the next one coming, he started to sniff around, you know those seconds before the sneeze, where you have a feeling its gonna come, but you just stop before the sneeze. It looked kind of funny for others, it appeared as though ht is sniffing something, its really amazing how one man’s misery can appear funny to others.

Ashwin was nearing his destination, where he was supposed to get down, when suddenly he heard a girl screaming, as he looked up he was surprised to find out she was indeed screaming at him, for some time he could not even find out what had happened, what she was unhappy about, he was too sleepy and tired to bother, but looking at how serious she was, he woke himself up. Ashwin asked her what has happened and why she was screaming. She began to
complain that Ashwin was misusing the proximity in the bus and trying to smell her hair. She had seen him sniffing her hair many a times. For a moment his face was worth a thousand bucks, he was totally surprised and was caught with no guard. He could not even think why she was making that allegation.

Ashwin began to politely tell her that he was not sniffing her hair, and it just the cold he had, she was not in a mood to her ashwin at all. She began to raise her voice and make a scene out there. As she had a gang from her college, a lot of people joined in, and began to scold Ashwin, accusing him of being a real cheap fellow, trying to take advantage of girl like her. The college gang was a mixed group, it also had some guys in it, they too started accusing Ashwin, they started cursing at him, and wanted him to apologize and may be even fall to her feet.

Ashwin was now totally furious, he could not stand the stupid girl, he could not imagine how she could blow something so small to such huge proportions, he also thought of these guys trying to grab the opportunity to score a few points with these girls standing up for them. He continued trying to tell her about the cold he has been having over the weeks, but in vain, she had no mood to hear. Now even the driver and the conductor from the bus were pulled into the fight, and other passengers tried to intervene seeing that there were girls involved in the fight.

Poor Ashwin, who had really nothing to do with all this, stood there when each of them came
up with their version of the story, how they had seen him sniffing at other girls, how one had seen him winking at one of the girls and so on. Ashwin began to think of ways he thought would surely get him out of this mess. He thought may be he can show the prescription from the doctor showing he had cold and asking him to take some medicines, but that was two weeks old, so they might not agree. He then thought of probably opening up his wallet which has his brothers picture in it, and may be claim he was gay, and that might get him out of this mess. Or may be he can admit that it was not her but the other girl whom he thought was cute. He just stood there thinking all this.

As he lifted his eye to catch glimpse of the girl whom he had thought was cute before, he
could see that they were all giggling now, surprised he turned around, looking what had happened, thats when the girl screamed out “BAKRA” you have been punked.

Topic today over at skittles for heads or tails is any word which starts with letter P, and I chose “Planning”.

As I was wondering what to write for HoT prompt this week, I remembered a thing from my days in engineering college. One thing not many of my friends know about me is how I used to plan for the semester finals. The date of the finals used to be announced like about a month in advance, so I used to plan meticulously regarding what I will read when, I used to have timetables like for more than 6 weeks leading up to the finals as to what subjects to read when, the last two weeks used to be reserved for revision, even while doing revision I used to plan in such a way that I need not put in too much of a gap between the actual date of exam and the day when I revise the subject.

Why do one plan so much?, is it really required?. How much of our day to day life do we plan consciously?.I guess there are many people on either side of this debate, people who plan and people who don’t.

Many people love to take the situation as it comes, trust their instincts and believe they can make a strong and good decision when the need arrives, and are also ok with facing the consequences if their decision or the step backfires. They want to live more in the day rather then future.

Is planning really necessary? Does it spoil our spontaneity, do we tend to make more decisions based on the theory and knowledge, and not based on the actual situations, does this make over reflexes weaker?. Is planning more riskier because one might not know what do if it fails.

Speaking of meticulous planning, one does not really stop at PLAN A, I mean one plans for the failure as well and come up with mitigation plans like PLAN B and C and so on just in case PLAN A fails. Isn’t this all based on prior knowledge?, I know this would be a far less risky because this is more planned, and we have plan in place for every unseen circusmtanes, but somewehre I think we are gonna miss out on small pleasures of living the life as it comes.

When it comes to more uncertain things like life, how much can we plan, I mean can we really plan what we will be doing 10 years from now, and stick on to it?. I think I really planned my carrier, even when software industry wasn’t that big in Bangalore, I think when I was asked in my school magazine in 1994 what I wanted to be, I had said computer scientist. Can we tell something like that with our life, Can I say that I will be 8 years into marriage with a 6 year old kid, with a house in my name, and living with a wife at the end of next 10 years?.

How well can we plan our finances?, here I think we all need to put in a lot of effort because, this is something which can affect many parts of our life. One should be really careful as to how and where we spend out money.

I speak about this to my dad and he says, plan as little as possible, and enjoy as much as you can, because there are things which are in your control and many which are not, so why to plan for them, and spoil the days which you have in your hand.

what do you guys prefer a little boring, success highly guaranteed, uneventful, planned life? or the thrilling, success not so much guraranteed, risky unplanned life?.

Given a chance to travel time,
I asked myself,
Where would I like to be?

I would love to go back in time,
time when life was not a mad rush,
Life was still a struggle,
but sans the mad rush of the modern times,
when The roads were empty,
when The homes were full,
when families were big and joint,
When it was more about “us” than “I”
Where one wanted to live,
and not necessarily compete.

Given a chance to travel time,
I asked myself,
Where would I like to be?

I would love to go into future,
Time when life would have settled down,
Moved onto more meaningful paths,
with no strings attached,
with a victories over temptations,
with people who know how to coexist,
where people have learnt to smile again,
where happiness is no longer just money,
where The greenery once lost, has been rebuilt,
where humanity once extinct, has resurfaced.

——————————————————————————————

Topic today over at writer’s island is “Time Travel”

Random Contrasts:
The week that went by had two extreme days, let me start with the happy one. On Wednesday I had an amazing day, I mean one of those days where because of no reason you are happy. Having lunch that day, we laughed so much that my stomach began to hurt, the reason was something very silly, and I myself may not laugh on that again, but still we were a bunch of four, and I could not stop laughing at all. I haven’t laughed like that in ages. Even after lunch, the whole day was amazingly happy and fun. Thursday was a total opposite, One of the worst days I have had in months, nothing seem to fall right in place, setbacks after setbacks, and more importantly no mental peace at all. I wanted to get over it, I wanted to forget about events, but then newer ones kept on occurring and I was feeling a lot down. This kind of carried onto Friday and a little into Saturday. On the whole it was a week of strong contrasts.

Random Hypocrisies:
One of my friends has decided to get married and has began the hunt for the prospective wife, so generally the point of discussion in the group has become marriage and choosing girls in general. One of these days, we were asking him his requirements, what is he looking for. I would not like to tell what he said, but I was really impressed to see a person who really knew what he wanted. In the discussion, the point of boozing and smoking came out, and I declared that when I begin to search, one of the requirements I would have is that the girl should drink occasionally. My theory is that, I have seen many a girls who come into our family getting a cultural shock when we cousins, along with out immediate elder generations including my father and uncles have an occasional drink at home. I have seen many new women coming into the family not happy with this practice.
The very next day, I was watching TV, and one of the songs of movie “Khoya Khoya Chand” and I saw “Soha Ali Khan” and immediately I got a talk, one should be as demure and beautiful as her. The fact that she looked so appealing was that she was extremely traditional look in the movie, with a antique look to her.
Are we hypocrites in wanting this?, I mean we want people to be modern and accept our lifestyle, however when it comes to women we want someone who is traditional in appearance?

Random Surprises:
Last week I did a post about meeting people online, and possibilities of a relationship with people you meet online titled Love in the times of world wide web. . I have to say the response left me totally surprised. I never expected people to be so open to meeting people online, and more importantly more women trusting people from the internet. Even though I am not completely convinced myself of the prospects, I was really happy to see more people “trusting”, definitely a very good sign for the society we live in. I did get some really practical responses, saying one should do more ground work before going ahead and meeting someone from online, but still on the whole I found people far more trusting then what I imagined we are. Such an eye opener this one was.

Random Romance:
I am not sure if many of my friends noticed this, but most of my posts in last couple of weeks have been in a way related to romance. As I had mentioned before, I did try my hand in writing romance this last couple of weeks, I could not manage a mushy story, not even close to romance we get to see mostly on television or the romantic novels. Still an attempt is an attempt right.
I wrote about a how a woman desires happiness and romance much more than any logic can define as a short story inQuestions unasked... I wrote about how people should blend and not think too much about changing each other or in the worst case change the person itself in It’s not all about change. I wrote about the new age internet romance in Love in the times of world wide web.
I also wrote about the flirting over at my other blog. so how good or bad was my brand of romance?

Random Foodie:
Looks like the foodie in me has suddenly lost his way, I seem to have lost the enthusiasm towards trying out new food stuff, more importantly my partners in crime seem to be very busy with their personal lives, making it even more difficult for me to get motivated to go and try new stuff. Whats happening people?

Random Rants:
My personal PC had died down last week, I tried to get it working last weekend, after about half an hour of struggle gave it up, was hoping the time plays a healer to my PC as well and it will get better as the days progress, turns out time does not help PC’s so had to call a repair person to make it to work. He took 10 mnts to correct it, unfortunately he screwed up a lot of other stuff, so when he fixed the new issues after 45 mnts, the original problem was back on. Finally after about 3 hours in total he found out some wire on the mother board had shorted because of the dust, all it needed was a puff of hot air from his mouth, and my PC started booting. Turns out after years in software industry, my hardware knowledge isn’t that bad, I kept asking him, in fact commanding him what to check next :D. Now that my PC is back, I think I can give rest to my office laptop.

Last week one of the days, as usual I was reading blogs on my reader when I came across this post Roll Out the Red Carpet - A Night at the Vanilla Awards by Absolute Vanilla… (& Atyllah) . Thank you so much for so many awards that you have passed on to me Vanilla.

Vanilla writes from South Africa, giving us all an insight into the natural beauty of the surroundings. On of the many things she writes, and always attracts me is about the humanity, we get used to simple things in life around the world, and it needs immense observation to see what really is happening socially in your part of the world, and she does write about them with tremendous insights, and she is a great photographer too.

Here are the things she has passed onto to me

Thanks once again Vanilla, for these beautiful awards.
Now comes the tough job, passing it onto more people. I think I am going to be a little greedy and pass it onto everyone in the blog world, becase so many people whom I don’t read regularly make my day when I accidentally discover their blogs. There are so many people who have such powerful words coming out of them in their blogs, some I get to read, and many whom I haven’t found yet.  The people all around the world have accepted each other in blog world with so much respect, so the big heart award as well should be given to thousands of people who are willing to share their ideas, thoughts and feeling across this world.