Virtual Ramblings

A drink in their hands,
Smiles on their face,
A candle to soothe,
And a lovely conversation too .

Outrageous they were termed,
A single mom, she belonged to nineties
A tired teacher, he was of sixties

They shared something beautiful,
Battered bodies, shattered souls.

The bridge they began constructing
Was never meant for completion.

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I am just back from a vacation, and for a change am in a real good mood, I struggled to write something on outrageous but I was in too much of a positive frame of mind to think about outrageous, then I began thinking about completion and kind of struggled with that too. Hopefully this makes some sense

Some of my old readers might remember a two part post which I did some time back, “It happened “ and “couple of good news” . It was one of those posts where some of the people were disappointed at my behavior, and some excited as to what might follow. The part 3 of that story never happened and till today I never saw that girl/woman again.

Why did I think about that incident?, you might wonder. I see a lot of campaign going on TV these days, saying stop leching. I have read numerable blogs which talk about the subject eve teasing, incidents related to molestation which seem to be finding headlines in Indian media almost every other day. People at mall’s being groped and comments of sexual nature being passed at, passers by. I totally agree that these forms of crime against women should not be tolerated; more importantly should be dealt with bigger punishments. Women today are being subjected to this kind of nonsense, and high levels of humiliation, is this making smaller crimes like looking/staring acceptable?. Firstly is looking/staring really a crime.

I have to admit, I am a little confused when it comes to the difference between looking and staring. I did what I knew best searching for it over the internet

star•ing: To look directly and fixedly, often with a wide-eyed gaze. See synonyms at gaze.

look•ing: employ one’s sight, especially in a given direction or on a given object: looking out the window; looked at the floor.

So from this, it appears as if “looking” is just having a glance where as, starting is to have a prolonged and wide eyed look. So how often men/women are guilty with this?. I mean we all look at things around us, and people of opposite sex happen to be around us, so we do spot them. So may be looking is not that much of a crime. Moving onto the staring part, after one has had a look, if he/she continues to look with deeper interests, in a fashion making the person of interest conscious, that would constitute a “stare”. Now is that bad?. I feel yes in most cases.

There have been numerous times, when I am really angry and have given wide long stares at the other person, Instead of yelling out abuses or even breaking into a verbal fight. So I do know consciously when I want to stare, how to do it. If one has really bad intentions, he/she might end up indulging in “staring” for bad reasons. However when the intentions are not consciously bad, when one is genuinely looking when it turns into a stare is a difficult line to draw. How many times have we caught ourselves staring at something or someone without even realizing? So when that happens, does that constitute a crime?. Going by the approach that, a murder committed unconsciously still constitutes a crime, this as well might end up in such a bracket. All it calls for is more self control.

So coming back to the twin incidents, was I guilty?. May be yes for looking, and definitely no for staring, not at this case atleast, mainly because if I know me, you can relate, when I say that, most of my staring happens in the “mind”, where I tend to think about things which matter to me the most in a person. Infact one of the most common problems I face in public places is when, I kind of get lost in my thoughts, my eyes drifts unknowingly to a distant object, mainly towards sky, or a distant gate in view, or the most commonly window by the side, at this moment if someone is sitting in the line of sight, I have ended up being conscious of the fact that someone might mistake that I am staring at them.

I don’t claim to be a hermit, I do look around, and very rarely continue to look at people from opposite sex, but it needs a very good mood. I mean normally I am never in good mood. When I walk around the city, and chose to walk with my head down or up towards the sky, I have imagined many a times, that girls around me might think what kind of a fool I am to do that, or whats wrong with him.

I recently came across a project called “Blank noise”. . I had seen this couple of months ago, and was wondering how men can contribute to such projects, today got to read some sections in the site, mainly to understand what really bothers women, and how bad is the situation. Looking at the statistics there, the situation seems to be really bad. So we do need more of us to contribute. So made me wonder how I can contribute. What we can all do is first consciously avoid doing simplest of things, even things like starting or avoidable ‘looking’. One might be really good, but if his/her friend tries to indulge in such things, or even try to glorify it as achievement, be quick to point out how stupid they are to think that as achievement. Atleast try and discourage people around you who try to whistle or pass comments. We can do atleast this much cant we?

Looks like I am making this “over at” post a weekly feature :).. This weeks pursuit happened to be on the topic of  “flirting”, more than flirting it was about how people see flirting as, so guys drop in and let me know what you think about it.

“A confusion called flirting“

It had been quite some time I wrote something over at pure pursuits, did have something up there today.

Dedication, thats how I see it, no I am not talking about the dedication towards your studies, nor towards one’s carrier, nor towards one’s girl friend or wife. I am talking about the dedication towards one’s body. I think virginity is dedication to one’s body, and making sure you respect your body more than anything else.

Read rest of the post here “Would you call it dedication?“

Anna Garlin Spencer who was an American feminist, speaking about man/women friendship, once quoted saying “The friendship between a man and a woman which does not lead to marriage or desire for marriage may be a life long experience of the greatest value to themselves and to all their circle of acquaintance and of activity; but for this type of friendship both a rare man and a rare woman are needed“. What I recently discovered not only rare men and women are needed for that kind of a friendship, but even rare people needed to understand one such friendship.

I generally don’t believe in keeping contact with people, whose views I cannot appreciate, or rather cannot stand. Unfortunately when they become a business liability, you end up keeping interface with them, even though you hate their presence. “Falling in my eyes” was an instance of such horrible person, with whom I still have to interact.

When you meet a person, you really can’t know his/her real attitude, and thus may sometimes end up being friends with people whom you later discover, to be really bad, or incompatible with your ideologies. I generally distance from them slowly, just hoping that they don’t feel totally left out suddenly. Still over the years I have maintained contacts with all such one time good friends. Recently, on the occasion of the new years, I pinged a one old friend on gtalk, mainly to wish him a happy new year. Its been almost more than 6/7 months since I had talked with him, or emailed. After the pleasantry exchanges, the usual hows work stuff, he started to loosen up, and things which I hated started to come up. Its surprising how people keep track of what you are upto, even without talking to you directly, he seem to know whom I am spending time what, whats happening at my workplace, and with whom I was generally in good terms with.

When you are not aware of a relationship, I guess the best thing you can do is not to talk about it, because you never know how you are affecting the other person. He started commenting about a nice friendship I have developed over the recent times. I could not stand it. He had absolutely no right to talk about a friendship, in such a bad taste. Firstly I doubt if he has ever understood how a friendship can exist between opposite sex. More importantly I don’t think he understood what friendship means in general. I gave an excuse and logged off the gtak, but I was pretty pissed the whole day.

The next day my reader showed up this post from a friend No place for friendship.
Its strange how often the friendship gets misunderstood, sometimes from the people involved and many times from people outside. When there are sentiments involved, it makes it all the more sensitive topic to be dealt with.

As I do not have much insight about how women misunderstand the friendship, I will chose to write my views from the male perspective. People always accuse of the men to misinterpret friendship to a relation of romantic interest. I think I agree to this partially. I do not know if it only happens wrt males, but in some cases, I have seen myself, and felt in a odd occasion, that I misinterpreted the intention in a friendship. I guess this is inevitable in a non established relationship, when each have their own agenda, or probably they haven’t even set up their minds as to what to expect in the friendship. Do you think the one who misunderstood is guilty?, I am not so sure on that one. One thing is for sure, when the misunderstanding comes out, in most of the cases, thats the end of the friendship.

Talking about the more damaging part, people not knowing anything about the relation, people who see that from a distance, many times have something nasty to say, hurting the sentiments of the people involved, especially if it is about a person whose friendship you really care about. As it happened in my case, my respect for the person further deteriorated, more importantly put in a doubt in my mind, what if all people are looking at the friendship with a bad perspective?, more importantly what if the other person has other ideas more than friendship. Basically ruined something which was doubtless.

I agree this does indicate a weak friendship, what some one says or does should not have any effect on your strong friendship, thats ideal situation we are talking about, and it takes time for all friendship to reach that stage, and in the mean while, someone makes such a comment, and it really effects you.

For a long long time, I did not believe in pure friendship, not with the same sex, specially not with the opposite sex, but perceptions do change, for some sooner and for less fortunate ones like me later. Why is it that common a notion that “Man and a woman cannot be just friends”.

Last time I thought about this, I ended up all in questions and confusions. This does happen in most of the other topics too, but this time I had something deep up my mind, the result being, me still thinking about it, and these afterthoughts I have had had.

The last question I asked myself, in the post was should we talk about it, I have for years and years believed, no, we should not. There are things meant to be private and this topped the list. I think one of the changes I went through, changed this as well, I felt there is nothing to be ashamed in telling people what you think, I know what should be my limitation, and what I should be telling people, and this did not find a place in the list anymore.
People who visit my blog thought otherwise I guess, not many wanted to say what they feel about this, I know the mental block and I totally respect that. I would just like to remind, that if identity is the issue here, then we do allow anonymous comments, even if you don’t want to say, just think about the topic, I am sure you will surprise yourself with a thought or two.

The relationship between body and soul in intriguing, as much you think about the topic, you tend to discover newer aspects about this relationship. I started with a theory, a very idealistic one, body being a slave of the soul. I have had so many days, when I am down with a bad fever, or even a severe cold with nose blocks, still have concentrated like never before on my work, or something as silly as an episode of my favorite TV show, or even a sporting event. My will power, or my mind or the soul, whatever you want to call it it, had been such a powerful master that my body had to become its slave. There has been many a days when your body wanted something very much like rest due to tiredness and you just dismiss its request, it has to do what your mind wants it to do. I am sure you can relate the same to other bodily needs. I might be with no experience in this matter, but I can bet that there would have been days when your body was in no mood for it, but the emotions ran so strong that, your body ended being a slave for it. A great gesture by your mate, a deep moment between the two, a mere act of understanding or the ever illusionary love, anything might have slaved your body, in dire situations to respond to your mind.

Just this idealistic thought about the relationship, and my mind begins to wonder, how converse of this is as much true. There have been days when I have not be able to concentrate even a bit on what I am doing, because of a tiny prick in my feet, or a little nail that has come out, or even as simple as bad smell my nose is picking up. I would be honest to admit, cases when an attractive female who passes by has made me lose concentration, now in most cases I do have weird rules of attraction, like what she says, what she thinks and whats her opinion, but then there have been occasions where it is none of those, its just the sight, the look and body, body does find a natural attraction to the other. How cheap it might sound, but it is true and lust I think is as natural as love. So is not my mind slave of my body here?, aren’t we ignoring the logic in our mind, our principles in life, and even our thought process, for something as trivial as bodily lust?.

So I decide, they must be having a discrete relationship, totally disjoint from one another. No one is slave of the other, each work on their own. They just co exist. Like the time someone experiences acute pain in their stomach, for a second all they can think is the body and its pain, just a minute later, you tend to worry about what happened to the score in the game last night. At a point when you know that you have a body and it has its needs and problems, you just accept its existence, and get on with your life. Let the body take care of itself, and the soul take care of itself. It reminds me of a scene from the movie The Notebook, where the lead actor, as he waits for his love to come back just spends his nights with a widow, knowing purely it is his body which she is servicing not his mind. He wants the both to coexist with his love, without the two getting in way of the other. Personally I feel this is most difficult to achieve, and still I have a lot of doubt if this is indeed correct. But none the less, this still is a relationship between the two.

So If I don’t want them to be that way, the only left relationship is when both the mind and the body both are masters, both have their interests vested, they both want the same thing, body
aiding the mind, and the mind taking care of the body. This sounds so ideal right?, I mean no separate existence for any one of them. As ideal it may sound, I think it’s not. There is something missing in this too, say you are throughly depressed due to something that happened at work, or may be suffered a big loss, your mind is all over the place, may be at this point, you need something totally disconnected from your mind to give you a breather, something which gives you immense pleasure and takes your mind away from worldly matters, and makes you feel a little out of world, isn’t this where a body could help?

Moving on to the next question, do men and women think differently about this, I liked the way Jason said, he questions back, “don’t two women think differently?”. Exactly this is such a personal thought, and feelings can vary from individual. I think the myth that men are for body and women are for soul, was totally busted with the more I read. The more I know the world I feel, its just about what gives you pleasure, some find immense pleasure in following their soul, and if body becomes a part of it so be it, some on the other hand, find immense pleasure in listening to their body, and if soul does not want it, so let it be. And some find immense pleasure in challenges, so if body throws a big challenge to them, curbing the body gives them immense pleasure, on the other hand, if people are sick of the logic, and they don’t want it to dictate what they enjoy, they find immense pleasure in being rebel.

It just keeps me on and on, I cant seem to decide what my philosophy is in this regard.
Guys do let me know what you think.

You can read the rest of the series here “Body or Soul” or Pure Pursuits

Jason write at Jason’s space. I have not known him for long, to be honest have not read much of his work, [Jason I am sorry, I was being totally honest here]. From what I have read so far, he appears to me as a person who has lot of, ideas, waiting to be told, thoughts waiting to be expressed and discussed.
Hoping to know more about his ideas, and his thoughts over this series and posts on his blog. Jason writes at
http://www.jasonmonserrate.blogspot.com

You can read the rest of the series here “Body or Soul” or Pure Pursuits .

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At the outset, i would like to stay away from generalization or inductive reasoning based on a few examples. Also, every question i have touched upon opens a larger set of questions. Pages and pages could be written about the topic.

You have got me thinking on a lot of areas. I sincerely believe that the mind tends to specialize in an area or areas of importance at any particular point of time. Its specialization tends to vary with time. What may be important to you as a 18 year old does not hold the same significance in your life when you are 35 or 70. The topics of interest do not always evolve from the more inane to the more focussed, from the general to the precise. It could also degenerate into some entirely insignificant. This is broadly unconnected to your post. So let me leave this out.

The body and the soul - Its hard to separate. Both are controlled by the mind. Which is the control tower. Nothing can be done exclusive of the other. I do believe it is the complete package.

You can read the rest of the post here.

Hello, my name is Silver and I am a virgin.

I do not make this statement in jest. I do not make this statement to boast and I do not make this statement out of shame or embarrassment. I make this statement as a matter of fact. I am a virgin.

Recently Rambler asked his blog readers to share with him things that we would not discuss on our blogs. Being the smart ass I am, I stated that I would not discuss my sex life, or rather, my lack of sex life. As fate would have it however, here I am doing exactly that. Funny how things work out.

I find being a twenty-something female virgin in the United States to be a challenge. I am constantly being challenged by two different mindsets, the traditional and the modern, both of which are strong forces in my personal life.

You can read the rest of the post Call me a romantic - by silverneurotic

Throwingroses, as we know him writes at My life as a conscious observer. I am not sure how I came across his blog, or was it him who left a first comment, I guess it does not really matter. From what I have known him through his blogs, he is one deep thinker. Now isn’t that something great and rare, he writes less compared to blog crazy people like me, but all his posts are really well thought, precise and insightful. He has introduced me to some of very good music on his site, and his experiences in his cafe are really interesting.
He writes at

You can read the rest of the series here “Body or Soul” or Pure Pursuits .

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Much like a dog so is our body. The dog breathes whimpers and cries into the air out of a desperation. All the noise and even the possible tugging of pant legs are to let the master know what it needs. The dog may need to be walked or even just a little hand to head petting, but the master chooses to ignore.

You can read the rest of this post below
Who’s the master - by Throwing roses.