Virtual Ramblings

Skittles has an interesting topic for this week’s Heads or Tails. She wants us to share a fond memory. I could’ve brought something out of the my 26 year old memory bank, but I chose to bring out a very recent memory, something as recent as this weekend.

This weekend I took a break from my routine work and decided to take a small weekend vacation with my my parents, my cousin and his family, and my aunt’s family. It began with a plan to spend the weekend at a resort, only to find out they were all booked, we didn’t want to cancel, so decided to spend the weekend at my aunt’s place instead. However we just stopped over on the way to Mysore, to see if there were any last minute cancellation at the resort we wanted to stay, and to our surprise we found what we were looking for. We booked for a single night stay for Saturday, and we negotiated a good deal from Saturday morning till Sunday late afternoon. What followed was a string of sweet memories.

• Nostalgia from years down the line spent in Mysore with my two cousins, the times we have had fun, places visited and pranks relived, fun remembered. Sometimes it fun just reliving the moments from the past
• An Aunt’s special dinner, with a delicacy which she prepared the best, I have to admit I ate a little too much
• A place which is very small, and has an almost unnoticeable grandeur, well I am not talking about the famous Mysore palace, but a place called “Mylari hotel”, famous for their amazingly soft Masala Dosa. Saturday morning spent over a sooper cool breakfast.
• Being greeted by some Bikini clad people at the resort by the pool [well I am naughty sometimes :)]
• An hour spent along the river kaveri, trying to help my 6 year old niece catch a fish.
• Hours spent lazing in the pool, without knowing how to swim, and almost blind without my specs, with my niece and my cousins.
• Playing cards with the family till 1 am filled with roars of laughters and lots of fun.
• Sleeping till 9:30 in the morning to be woken by a bored niece
• A trip to a local hillock and a very calm temple, walking bare foot in a scorching sun.
• A long enacting of a being a wild flower, with a lot of swaying and hushing noise as well, my niece is playing a flower in her summer camp’s play. So we got a demo of her play as well as the dance she is gonna perform.
• A post lunch card game to wrap up a lovely weekend spent, with a lot of fond memories to carry away from.

Remember the question I asked some time back?

“People who do not affect us, people who really do not care much about us, people who were close to us once upon a time, people who have grown up and apart, why do they still matter to us so much?, why can’t we forget that people who have drifted apart?“

I think I am back to the same thought again today, I think I found the answer, “Time”, how effectively it makes us forget people, and reduced their need, their importance.

This put a even bigger question on my mind, are people really important?, people who did not stand the test of time, do they still matter to us?, is “mattering” just a function of time?, or time just hides the importance and people will be back to haunt us soon.

Hinduism is known for a lot of festivals, even though over time many of them have lost its festivities, some of them have survived modernization and lack of time. Some of these festivals are my favorites, some because of the way we celebrate them, some for the sweat memories associated, and some for the philosophy behind the festival, today happens to be one such festival. Today is the first day of our new year.

Like Chinese calendar which has 12 years named after animals, Hindu calendar has an year cycle of 60 years, and each of them are called samvatsara, at one point I could name all of them, but aging body has affected my memory ;). Today happens to be the beginning of the sarvadhari samvatsara, and we call the festival “Ugadi”, which literally means a beginning of the new year [era]. You can read some more info about the festival here.

On the day of  Ugadi, apart from the normal practice of taking an oil bath, and praying to the god, we have two very unique practices. One is we touch the feet of the oldest in the family, and he/she will provide us with the blessings and hand out a mixture of neem[margosa] and jaggery [unrefined sugar], the other thing is the eldest in the family, generally the male reads the almanac or panchanga [Indian calendar] .

I like the philosophy behind handing out the mixture, as today is the beginning of the new year, this practice is a symbolic way, of the eldest in our family to tell us, life is going to be a mixture of a sweet jaggery and also the highly bitter neem, so the elders bless us with the courage to face both the highs and the lows. As kids I used to hate eating neem, as it is very bitter, especially the flower is much more bitter than the leaf, but then as I began to realize the importance, the bitterness became more symbolic, and at the end it really solved the purpose, you cannot eat just the neem its too bitter, nor can you take just the jaggery its very sweat, so its always good to take life as a mixture.

Reading the almanac, is again a group activity, like many of the other festivities, this again is an attempt to gather the family members, almanac has a lot of predictions for the year, including the months where rains are  predicted, days which are considered to be auspicious, days of eclipse and stuff like that, it provides a common platform where the family could really plan the year ahead, and take inputs from each other. Its again a symbolic gesture, we really don’t go through the almanac, and only as a formality my dad generally reads through some paged of it, but good thing is we all get together, discuss what we are planning for the year, and more importantly know a bit about this samvatsara.

Wishing you all a very happy ugadi, and a very prosperous Sarvadhari samvatsara.

Topic over at skittles today for Heads or Tails is “Fool”, in spirit of April 1st being the world fools day. This also happens to be the day when one of my close friend P turns an year older. So wishing him a very happy birthday!.

Years ago when I was a teenager, the movie Titanic released in India. This was one of those over hyped movies, which everyone wanted to see, the movie got released in many theaters and all of the shows were running full. The word about a nude scene by Kate Winslet had spread like wildfire in our high school and all of catch the movie, so we boys went early in the morning to stand in the queue and got tickets for the evening show paying a huge amount for the ticket, almost more than half of monthly allowance around that time. I did not like the movie that much, I found it really boring. We came out of the movie hall fuming at the censor board for depriving us of basic pleasures, and also robbing us by taking such high ticket fares. What fools we were, both to expect censors to be liberal in India, and also to think such big of celebrity nudity.

Anyways, the actual story I was thinking about is not that one, slightly related though. I did not tell at home that I had watched the movie, mainly because Titanic was released in India with an A certificate, [Adults only movie]. A group of cousins came home on a Sunday morning and persuaded my father to let me go to the movie with them, and my father obliged. Now I was not interested, because these guys were planning to watch Titanic, and I had already seen it, I did not want to spend so much on the tickets again, nor could I tell them I had already seen the movie, I kind of struggled to excuse myself out of the plans, finally I brought out the triumph card, saying I had a test the next day and I had to prepare. This was too good a weapon, so I got excused and all my cousins went for the movie. This was the night show, the one which begins at 9:30pm and finishes at around 12:30 am. Since one of my cousins stayed with us, we had given him the keys so that when he comes back late in the night, he can open the door and let himself in.

I slept at my usual time of around 9:30pm thinking that these guys will be late, at around 10:30 I heard a noise and I woke up to see that my cousin was already back, I was surprised because I had already seen tickets with them, and was wondering how come they were back so early. I was too sleepy to ask though, so just went ahead and slept. Next morning, I came to know what happened. Apparently these guys went in a little late to the movie, since the lights were already off, they went to the person with the torch to show them their seats, he promptly showed them the seats and went away, these guys began to watch the movie, when few people came their claiming the seats to be there’s, looking at the tickets these people realized they had been duped, the guy showed them the seats had exchanged the tickets to that of an older show, and sold them outside for a huge money. [Sunday night show for a big movie fetches big money]. My cousins fought with the manger in the movie hall, and every possible person but in vain. So finally they were thrown out. Poor guys came home with a long face looking sad, feeling foolish to get duped in such a way. Everybody at home scolded them for being foolish and careless not to look after their tickets .

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?.

Random Thoughts:
Recently I read a comment “here“, even though I thought the whole post was with a sense of humor, my eyes did catch a comment which said about about being tongue tied when guys approach a thinking woman. Lets forget about the distinction of being a thinking women, and take women in general, how many of the men really approach a woman and talk freely. I guess there is a lot of difference with boy approaching a girl, and a man approaching a woman. I have seen and have myself been at one point of life in the category where the shyness in approaching a person of opposite sex was very high. I think somewhere we grow out of it, may be that is called maturity, or may be we just grow up. Coming back to the comment about thinking man/woman, I do not think there is anyone who does not think, may be the topics we think about may vary, and also our sensibilities.

Random update:
Driving classes, I have finally started ticking of things I planned to do in next two years. I started my driving classes last week. Waking up early was never an issue for me, but it had been quite a while since I got scoldings from some one, when my driving instructor scolds me early in the morning sometimes, I feel like being in my primary school, where my teacher used to scold me for not doing my work properly. It is almost the same environment as before,where I do some silly mistakes and the instructor is all set to pounce on me. Its still all in fun

Random Reality:
Last week has been really taxing mentally, I had a feeling of an unknown urgency, an unknown mental blockage, I was not able to think for most of the week. It all changed on Friday, as I reached home a little early, there was a big power cut, for about two hours, I had nothing to do, I was laying on the bed, that cleared my anxiety very much. I began to think again properly, and for a change, the unscheduled power cut in my locality had a great soothing effect on me. Well I did receive some comments about writing block on my post of Thursday, more than the writier’s block, it was my mental blockage which was making me very anxious, I am glad to be out of it

Random changes:
For starters I hate to change my routine life, more importantly I hate to change things associated with me. It took almost more than 2 years for my cousin to make throw out my old outdated mobile. I guess I am guilty of attaching too many memories to things. This week I finally am going to move onto a different number, I mean I am changing my network provider, it had been Hutch from last 5 years, and the same mobile number for as long as I can remember. Finally they have lost my loyalty and me my number. Not that many people call me on my mobile.. still its something which I brought with my first earned salary, even though I lost the instrument the number had a lot of memories associated with it.

Random Nostalgia:
Speaking of mobile phones, and memories, the week had a lot of nostalgia associated with it. Somehow I was ending up remembering many people and incidents from the past, not just the incidents even the movies I saw, kind of had memories associated with it. The week had some interesting movies being shown early in the morning in one of the channels, just in time of my breakfast when I get to have 20 mnts of TV time. Why do we do this, why do we associate memories with things around us. Its not just a movie, its the people who have watched with, the state of mind I was in when i watched the movie.
BTW, that reminds me, Its been quite sometime since I watched “Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind”.. should catch it on DVD

Random quotes:
This was an interesting observation made my fellow blogger shefaly on one of my posts extremes. “Rambler: Have you considered an academic career? I notice you notice things (empirical data) and then try and identify a pattern (define algorithm or propose hypothesis) around them. And of course, from what we know, you are not married so this discussion is purely academic, no? “
Actually this kind of surprised me, she might have just joked about this, but does Rambler really do this?, hypothesize a lot on available data and experiences?..

The alarm in my phone went buzz at 3:30 am, time to switch on my geezer, I was too excited to go back to sleep, so I decided to spend time online instead. Even before I could realize, I had finished all my morning work, and was all set to reach the airport, as planned we were supposed to meet outside the airport at 5:15, that meant I need to leave my house by at least 4:30. Being silly as I am, I was ready to spend 16k on the tickets, but too stingy to spend 400rs on the taxi, so I decided to drive my active to the airport pulling my dad along, he was supposed to drive back the activa. As usual I reached the place on time, just about 5 minutes early. One of my friend was already there. My other friend who generally is on time, had not yet reached, looking at the early morning crowd, we decided to stand in the queue, in no time we were at the front of it, but my other friend had not yet arrived. So we went ahead with the check in. We had planned to wait before the security check, unfortunately there was a huge queue there as well, and the airlines people recommended that we go ahead with the security check. Still there was no sight of the third person. By the time we finished security check and a cup of coffee inside in the lounge, there was just 10 mnts left for the take off, so we had to go ahead with the boarding. Still no sight of the third friend, we could call him and were sure he was waiting at the security check. So we went ahead with the boarding, just on the dot, he came into the flight. So there we were all set to fly out at 6:30 Am.

We forgot one thing though, its winter, and Delhi is very foggy, and so is Bangalore in early mornings, so an unexpected delay in take off, this meant 2 full hours of bored us sitting with our seat belt on, with nothing else to do. Good we all were excited about our vacation, somehow the time flew, and so did we around 8:30. About 3 hours in air, and we landed in Delhi, the capitol city of India. We were supposed to change terminals, so we came out of the airport, and we were supposed to wait for the courtesy vehicle that we had just missed, so we stood there, watching people. Apparently the guys found the Delhi crowd much colorful compared to Bangalore. As S always puts people still have a bias towards fair skin, indeed north Indians are more fairer, and hence all the attention to the crowd there. As we stood there waiting for the bus, and watching passers by, I was loosing a little interest in the wait mainly because the crowd began to grow, and I Was not liking it. Finally the bus came and we entered the bus, it took us out of the airport campus, for some distance, made an U turn and entered a different premises, later we realized if we had walked towards our left, it would have taken like 2 minutes to reach that place. We got into the new terminal, and I was happy to spot a coffee Day outlet there, I bought myself a Latte, and had to shell out 80Rs for it, a normal one costs around 30 so its like super rip off, but I was cool with it, as I was sure I Would not find good coffee once we reach Srinagar. I was ridiculed by my friends about my coffee addiction for the rest of our stay at the Delhi airport.

We finally landed in Srinagar at around 2:30 pm. I was just wearing a T shirt and a light jacket. we came out of the aircraft, and within the small walk to the covered shelter, we could feel the cold, the wind was chilling, and we were hoping the airport would be heated. Unfortunately the arrival terminal was not heated, so we had to shiver as we were waiting to collect our baggage. As usual I was very lucky, I was just the second last guy to get the baggage, it meant that I was already in danger of catching cold. We were supposed to take a taxi from here to gulmarg. It was an anonymous decision not to bargain outside, instead take the government provided pre paid taxi. It turns out that the Srinagar area is very organized, and all drivers charge the same amount. We loaded our luggage and set out for our last leg of the journey.

Knowing the amount of trouble in Srinagar, we expected a lot of checks before we leave the airport, it turns out that the army does not care who gets into Srinagar, its only the other way which they are very bothered about. As we started the drive, we chose the bypass to make sure we don’t enter the main city and to avoid the traffic. One thing that strikes you about the roads around Srinagar, is their sheer width, they are so damn wide, being used to the cramped ones in Bangalore, the width of the median and that of the roads were so much. As we entered country, I had hopes to see more scenic stuff, it turns out that during winter there is absolutely no vegetation around, the trees are leafless, and places which are supposed to be orchards with lots of apple trees around summer, looked so lifeless it was almost boring drive.

We reached Tangmarg, which is at the foot of mountain on top of which is gulmarg. We were asked to stop there because they said it had snowed on the mountain, and we had to hire a taxi with snow chains on the wheels. We took a sip of hot tea at a hotel at that place as we waited for the taxi transfers. We could see traces of snow at that place, and the temperature was almost freezing, we didn’t have gloves, nor sweaters out, so we just stood around shivering a little, the taxi finally arrived and we started on the last bit again. The distance was just around 15km, but then it had lot of curves, so it was around 30/40 mnts drive, as we began to climb, we began to see more and more snow, but there was no snow on the road. I guess its just their way of making a little more money. We reached Gulmarg at around 5, and the booking we had was at a place called “Rose wood hut”. None of the taxi drivers new about the place. So the driver dropped us close to gondola, which was the only landmark we had. We went into the adjoint hotel, to enquire, even the locals didn’t know about Rosewood hut. This point we were a little scared, may be we were duped with a non existent hotel when we booked online. We had the phone number of the website owner from that place, He promised to drop down to that place within few minutes and pick us up. So here is the first look we got of the ski town Gulmarg

As we stood there, in barely heated hotel, with temperatures of subzero, with doubts as to if we have been duped, the guy walked in introduced himself. It turns out that the taxi which we had hired was his friend, and he joined us and took us to the destination. The place looked really beautiful. We got down and were excited to see snow everywhere, the roads could not made out as it was totally covered with powdered snow. He introduced us to the hut owner who had come to the main road to receive us. He took some of the luggage as we started walking up to the hut. The journey was a little funny as all of us were sliding on the ice formed on the road. Finally we got the glimpse of the hut we were about to stay in.

It looked really impressive; as we entered we also found a nicely heated fireplace at the centre of the living room. we warmed our self up a little, as we spoke to the owner and the cook. It turns out there were no other people at the hut apart from us that day. It was a small home stay kind of place with 6 rooms in total. We dumped our luggage in the room, with nothing else to do, started thinking about our options for dinner. Being just in, we thought of going out for dinner. I brought out my sweaters, a nice warm cap, and a thick jacket for the cold, and we started out.

It was already around 7:30 pm by this time, unfortunately gulmarg does not have street lights, and there we were in an unknown place, walking on slippery snow, with no idea as to how much we need to walk to find the restaurant. We walked a little distance, and we found a proper hotel, it was mainly a place which looked like a big boarding place, with a restaurant attached. We walked in, and were surprised to find a internally heated place, with nice warmth. We went and pounced onto the menu. Kashmiri’s have lot of meat, and naturally all restaurants mainly serve the meat rich wazwans or curries. Two of us being vegetarians ordered “alu dum”, dal and rotis, and a portion of rice. Beware guys a portion of rice in Gulmarg is like 3 big portions by Bangalore standards, we ended up wasting most of the rice part. And the Alu dum was so much oily, still we finished the alu part of it fully. We walked back slowly to our place. All in one piece, and still not recording our first fall on the snow.

With all set to start skiing next day, we got into our beds just talking and thinking about the logistics of the coming day. Me being a fast sleeper didn’t even realize when I slept off.

Next up my tryst with skiing. To be continued….

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