Principles of Seduction

While the title clearly states the intention some of these principles stand good when we discuss things like making friends or impressing your boss.

Visibility
This is probably the first and most crucial step. The person you are trying to seduce has to know you exist, in clearer terms your face if not name must be familiar to her. If she's in your class of friend circle or dance group or office or your building its relatively easy for that to happen. If you happen to have your sights on somebody like in the next office building or the other section or worse in a senior or junior class visibility becomes an issue. For school or college going people the solution is simpler than for rest...become more active in the institutes activities. For working people common hangout areas is a good way of trying to achieve visibility.

Introduction
This is the step where boldness needs to intermingle with strategy. One needs the right setting to say the first hi, sometimes...most times, if the person is not connected to you through professional or personal circles one would need to artificially create that setting. The setting must be such that a hi seems almost normal. Yet this is one place despite all the right setting one would get cold feet and there nothing other than self belief comes handy. (It also helps the hi sound normal which otherwise can sound like one is having a heart attack).

An introduction is of no use if it doesn't lead to further opportunity of conversation, either by phone, further meetings or even social networking sites.

Milestone
By now we have reached the stage from strangers to aquaintances.

Opinion Building
The next part comes where you need to make the person see you in positive light. The whole aim is to become from a familiar sight to familiar thought.

Myth
Braun, money or looks are what sink women.
That is a very shallow understanding of people. while these have a very positive effect on anybody I believe that it is the fun part of being with the person that incline or disincline people towards you. This is where your talents, interests and persona work for or against you. What the other person is really looking for is that do you add to their life or subtract from it. And it is in the early stages only where one must investigate what excites the other person and then build your case around it.

Safety Tip and My Principle
It is also at this point that one must find out if the person is available or not. Given that these days people get into light or deep relationships right around when they leave kindergarden it goes to say that there is a high probability of you mingling with someone who is alreay been taken. It is a safety tip to around this time find out whether the other person is available or not.

While it is to the readers discretion to agree with my principle or not I do firmly believe that one must not make a move upon a person who has already been taken even though one at that time may firmly believe that this is the one, if that really is so...leave it to providence. It is not for a gentleman to raise his eye on someone else's affections, like it is for a gentleman to thwart an attempt of someone else raising his eye on their affections.

I do also believe that while one may begin with a very prejudiced motive one must not look at seduction from a very narrow view point. Seduction is only an attempt to convert a stranger into an aquaintance who likes you. It does not in any manner reflect the nature of the relationship so formed. I believe if man (human being) became more social and less isolated it would make for a more caring world. And so it is our duty to try wherever possible to build positive relationships whether they be friendly, romantic or even brotherly (or in case of senior people paternal).

Making the Move
The next barrier is when we know the person likes us, thinks positively of us but we are not sure of the extent. Taking the relationship from friendship to romantic relationship is a very crucial step. the cliched arm over the chair move in cinema halls is actually a very nice and innocent move. (Sometimes like it happened to me, the girl might mention that she is feeling cold or scared making it totally natural to do the arm thing)

However beyond that when we talk of physical intimacy unless you want to risk getting slapped and thought lowly off I prefer to not make a direct move but bring intimacy into the conversation and get the other person's view points. Once you have judged the other person's comfort levels it is for you to make half the move, let it be an invite and let the other person come in and grab it (quite nicely detailed by Will Smith in the first kiss scene of Hitch)

Caution
Physical intimacy more often than not can be construed as a implicit commitment. Hence if you are not making a commitment it would be gentlemanly to check with the other on their understanding of the situation

And the last principle to sum up the article

Seduction is not Love
You may have seduced the other person but it does not mean they are in love with you...attracted yes, love who knows. And this I say because the seduction activity works mostly on the basis of showing ones best side, and love mostly means accepting the whole package. And since seduction might result in a romantic relationship there is a great deal of risk involved. And hence i strongly recommend that having made reasonable progress on the seduction aspect, if one is seeking a long term relationship to make sure the person knows your quirks as well as your positives and vice-versa you should know the other person in and out.

These principles of seduction more often than not are needed when there are hinderances in the natural flow of things. In general one would prefer if love happened as naturally as breathing :)

beauty

This article doesnt talk about beauty per se...it originates from the thought of the description of gods and godesses in our scriptures. How is it that most of our gods and godesses are supposed to be a symbol of beauty?

As i remember all our scriptures try and say that we shouldn't look at physical beauty and yet our gods have to be beautiful...creatures with the perfect build...

Probably what they are trying to say is that we should aim for perfection...perfect soul...perfect body...perfect health etc etc when they say that god has it all perfect.

anyways i'll leave this article mid way for now...we'll come back to beauty at a later date...it is a very wide topic...

Religion

I liked this line that dad quoted me from some where...Hinduism, Islam, Christanity etc are religious followings; religion however is a very personal thing.

The religious followings are just a helping mechanism, all the chants, the rituals, the scriptures...

While our religion is our approach to spirituality, and each individual chooses his own path there.

Another aspect of religion is the concept of guru / guide. And here another famous saying needs ponderance...the guide chooses the follower. Which basically means that the lucky ones will get to meet the right guides, for since when i am ignorant it is quite impossible for me to know who is knowledgeable...And that is why quite a few people fall for godmen across all religious followings.

As the Gita points out the way to spiritual awakening can take various paths. The toughest one being through meditative process...or gyaan maarg...Then there is the one where you dedicate all your activities in the name of god and be the hand through which god acts or the karam maarg...and then there is the bhakti maarg...where in you devote your thoughts to God as a superior being and praise him through chants and try and follow on the ideals set by him...this is the route which is quite deeply entrenched in idolization of god as a being.

All of them are quite interesting and would probably lead to the same result with each being suited for people of different temprament

My trysts with spirituality have been quite interesting albeit inconclusive...probably by the end of time here on earth i'll be able to write a book similar to my experiments with truth...for essentially that is what it is ....a series of experiments...

Love

A conversation with a young teenager reciting her story of her first 'Love' and breakup made me remember my days of school, college and those years when almost everything we did came under the category of love...and while I tried explaining to this little one that probably the term she wanted to use was really liked she did insist upon it being love.

Having seen my fair share of relationships, family, friends, enemies, romantic, lustful and some that can not be classified...i feel the best example to understand love is to study maternal love. For rest of the relationships add different flavor to love itself be it fun, or romantic fervour for it to be hard to pin-point what exactly could be called the essence of love.

The maternal relationship however focusses on one core aspect, dedication, devotion, caring, sacrifice. It essentially defines that to have loved you have to give yourself away as much as possible and then some more.

That is why the Sufi saints can talk of romantic relationships in the context of religion for the examples they cite don't talk about the romance or the lust of the relationship but of the devotion and sacrifice in them.

And so be true for anything if you want to identify whether it has reached the depths of love is to understand how much you have given yourself to the other person or the cause...

Pursuit of happiness

A very philosophical question that affects most people at some point in their lives is the question of the purpose of their existence.

While I have no idea who made the earth or put us humans on it...i do believe that each one of us has a purpose being here...and it is to pursue happiness.

A friend of mine said, you spend half of your day in office...work has to be first priority. Though it was said in a different context, in a way he is right...wat one devotes most of the time to should get highest priority...and since we devote 100% of our time to our life...that should get even higher priority...and the measure of success of our life...how much we enjoyed living it.

The past one week i have spent observing and thinking on this...and i think what we mostly do is walk through our lives without pondering much on whether our actions and our pursuits really make us happy...

People get angry...people get worked up...people dedicate their lives to work, to their children, to accumulation of wealth, to honor and respect...yet most of us don't know wat gives us happiness...and so end up achieving most of everything that really doesnt add up to anything at all...

this is one article...that is very generic...gives absolutely no clue as to wat to take from it...and probably has been spoken of by half a dozen self help gurus a million times ( atleast mine is free)...yet i insist...that if you do start pondering about what will make u feel like u have enjoyed being here on earth...i shall have achived quite a lot...

the one tip i can give u is that...the first three iterations of thought are not the answer (in general terms)...and when u realize the answer it doesnt require u to leap off a cliff or give up your job (or it might)...but suddenly u might find u can start enjoying life...

sex

Just that one word like religion holds a power in itself. Clinton almost lost his presidency and marriage to it. And as indian economy booms and more kids start living independently we have started being more bold about this topic and more experimentative about it.

But despite the mystery and aura that shrouds it sex is nothing but one of things we do. It is not a sin, not an elixir...just an act of pleasure and recreation.

Can it ever be tied to sin, i believe it can, when lies are involved to get it...when feelings our hurt because of it.

Can it be associated to religion, i believe it can, when it doesnt become just an force of habit, but an event to be celebrated, as osho says...smoking by itself is not bad....its the habit that is habit, even praying as a habit is bad...if u give ure full devotion to the cigarette while smoking it, or to god when praying it is an act of worship of celebration...when sex is carried out with that level of intensity it can be called worship.

other aspects of this whole matter which pertrub me are...promiscuity, casual sex and perversion. Is having had too many partners promiscuity and when does the count call become too many? or even if u have had it with one or two...does it always need to be only when you are in love or is casual sex as good or bad as involved sex? and where does perversion fit in...group sex, swingers, lesbians and gays, kinks and fetishes...

And since i can't begin to fathom the impact or direction of these on society i reserve my thoughts to only the basic principle i believe in, our actions should not be such that they cause emotional or physical injustice to anybody, and that sometimes one can be daring and experiment with life at other times one must play safe.

brining the subject to a close...it is but an instrument of recreation and procreation...and so one shud try and make it as special as religion and when it comes to our offspring ensure the best nutrition and healthiest environment for them to grow up in

is non-violence that important

Gandhi had called of the non co-operation movement after the Chauri-Chaura incident, saying that Indians were not yet ready to govern themselves. A movement that was successful and had given hopes to a whole nation fell apart just like that. Is non-violence that important?

As I see it now, I can appreciate what Gandhi was trying to say then or i believe must have been what he was trying to say. Violence breeds violence and that an act of violence justified for one cause can be justified for many other causes. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter...

The violence we had perpetrated then as part of our free India movement has come back to haunt us as terrorism, riots, public justice (public lynching), morale police (shiv sainiks),or the frequent random acts of violence over petty issues etc.

While one may bring abouts laws on guns etc, that is trying to control the tools of the disease...it is the cause that we must cure...

BRT fiasco

Much has been said about the murderous BRT corridors set up in Delhi, however the keen issue missed while discussing issues which have become emotional is their intrinsic logical value.

A BRT corridor takes birth from the idea that a mass transport system is useless unless it is fast. Buses are a mass transport system but on a choc-block jam packed road they are as slow as the rest of the traffic.

A buss corridor is one of the ideas that intends to speed up the whole thing by saying that out of the whole road lets dedicate lanes only for buses, this way the only thing stopping them would be red lights. In theory this is a good idea, especially if you add to it ac buses which makes it convenient for even white collar executives to avail of this instead of travelling by their own vehicle.

However the current implementation as everyone has found out stinks. Primarily because

a. It seems that there was no choke points analysis done (refer to The Goal by Mr. Goldratt) which means till they built the thing they didnt know other than red lights what would slow down the system.

b. No plan B : which means in case of something going wrong like it did they had no plan to switch to and as they realized once something goes wrong its hard to react to it at that very instant

c. No Public discussion of plan: I am not sure of this, but i believe that the design of the corridor was not discussed publicly, the Linux system of keeping the code open works the best in cases like this because it allows everyone to find out faults in the sytem and suggest improvements making the design a whole lot more robust.

d. No Communication: All plans for the public require that the public be made aware of the costs as well as the benefits of the plan. As far as Delhi knows the plan is the brainchild of some dumb politician meant to harass them, Delhiites are in no mood to suppor the plan because their buy in was never sought for it...

so there goes...the learnings from the 5 Km stretch of the BRT could and can easily be used to correct the design flaws for the whole system, but for people who are right now too busy trying to save their own skins that doesnt seem to be a high priority thing.

going ahead the BRT is not the only idea that can make the busses a good mass transport option another way to do that is to make roads bus only for particular hours in the morning and evening. Like the BRT this is easier said than done but just like BRT the option is a feasible one.

Speeding up transport can also be done by encouraging car pooling (visit sites like carpoolmumbai.com ), private ideas like these should be helped along by the government.

Another note: I believe that the metro was badly designed. Given that the design can't be altered for the lifetime of it once it has been made, the metro has too little seating space inside, for a public transport system which offers most space as standing space and travel times of upto an hour it can be quite criminal to make the user stand while travelling, and this hasn't shown its face yet, but when the Noida to Gurgaon stretch gets done this aspect would come to light. I am not sure of the technical feasibility but wider cabins with more seating in them might have worked better in the Indian context than the American style cabins where the population load is quite less.