When I lived in Boston, during my ashram days in the 70s, I started carrying a police whistle and a small billy club with me. While walking alone from my house to the main ashram (which was about two blocks away and around the corner) for our morning yoga and meditation sadhana, I had had a frightening experience.
It was very early, before dawn, and the streetlights were still lit. There had been several inches of snowfall recently which the snowplows had piled neatly on either side of the road. Apparently, everyone else from my house had already walked over, so I was on my own that morning. So I’m walking along in the cleared street and ahead of me to my left, lying in a snow bank, I see a figure–this figure is a man–this figure has his pants down around his ankles, this figure is naked!!!. As I approached him, (now at a much quickened pace) he spotted me and began getting to his feet and muttered something unintelligible; I started running and as I passed him, he staggered toward me (very slowly) and as I continued to run, all the while looking over my left shoulder to keep an eye on him, he stood in the middle of the road and just stared after me as I disappeared around the corner. Whew!
I never did have to blow my whistle or bop anyone with my club but I did feel safer having them with me just in case.
Bodhirose's Blog 
Trisha
/ September 4, 2010dearest gayle,
you are a lucky lady. most probably that man was either completely drunk or in haze of drug or may be mad. otherwise he might have caught you. you should not have taken the risk of walking toward him.
i used to carry a perfume bottle in my purse since joining my first job. it looks so harmless yet is so useful.
lots of love.
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bodhirose
/ September 4, 2010Dearest Trisha,
I probably wouldn’t have continued on if I hadn’t seen that he wasn’t able to move very fast. He was like in slow motion getting to his feet and I was well past him before he finally got to his feet and stumbled out into the street. I agree he probably was drunk or drugged to be lying in a snowbank naked!
I was lucky indeed. There was another close call that happened to me–perhaps I’ll write about that one too.
Pepper spray or mace would be a good thing to carry too. That stuff can take a person to his knees.
with love,
Gayle
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Trisha
/ September 6, 2010dearest gayle,
as i believe in running away in place of hand to hand combat i think spray can be perfect. spray him on face then hit him on nose as hard as you can (that should be avoided because he can catch your hand) if he is blocking the road and run as fast as you can.
even then i will say you made a blunder because that guy might have been pretending weakness. did any one found him later? in live condition? i hope he was not sick and finally got frozen to death. 😦
lots of love.
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Bodhirose
/ September 6, 2010Dearest Trisha,
You know all those good strategies because you have taken karate. I would much prefer to avoid hand-to-hand combat at any cost since I have no training! Running is my forte!
Yeah, he may have been pretending, but he never came anywhere near me during this encounter. If he had, I would not have continued running by him. I walked back over to my house with other people later and he was no longer there. I believe he probably lived somewhere nearby and he staggered home or else some nice policemen came by and carted him off! (I can’t remember though if I called the police to report him when I got to the main house).
with love,
Gayle
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Trisha
/ September 8, 2010dearest gayle,
i too would have preferred bolting. with/without karate lessons. its common sense, because men are built stronger than women.
if he stood there in his natural glory chances are high that someone might have called the authorities 🙂
lots of love.
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Bodhirose
/ September 8, 2010Dearest Trisha,
At the time I saw him, it was probably between 4 and 5AM. I hope if someone else saw him, they called for authorities to check him out. Like I said, I couldn’t remember if I called someone when I got to the main house. I would have thought that I would have. In any case, there was no sign of him when some of us walked back home which would have been around 7-7:30AM.
Freaky!
with love,
Gayle
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Trisha
/ September 9, 2010dearest gayle,
yes, if someone else have seen him there in that condition he most probably would have called the police.
you meet all type of people in life if you live an independent life. 🙂
i am glad that you are safe.
lots of love.
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Bodhirose
/ September 9, 2010I’m glad I was safe too!
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Trisha
/ September 10, 2010yes. thank God that he was not pretending.
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Gayle
/ September 10, 2010No, I think he was truly somehow “disabled”, either through drink, drugs or mental illness–or maybe a combination of all three!
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trisha
/ September 13, 2010poor creature. but after watching so many movies and meeting a few good actors myself i always suggest people to act cautiously.
i still remember an incident which was absolutely safe but i felt like an idiot, very embarassed, it was in kolkata thats why people did not smirked but in small towns that would have made me a laughing stock.
i descended from the train and was going home when i saw a blind man (with stick) walking on the railway tracks (one train comes rolling in every seven/eight minute in those four tracks).
i first told him that you are walking on track, he ignored then i asked him to go away from tracks because its dangerous, he acted very rudely. so i walked away, after a while i saw he was happily walking on the tracks but avoiding every obstacle 🙂
when i commuted from burdwan i have seen a beggar sometimes begging as a blind man and sometimes as a polio victim. 🙂
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Bodhirose
/ September 13, 2010Oh, my gosh! A faking beggar–I believe it. I guess you would have felt a bit embarrassed–you thought you were trying to save the life of a blind man who didn’t know where he was walking–he was acting instead! 🙂
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Trisha
/ September 15, 2010that man was not beggar, i dont think so. and for the beggar – well, in india begging is a good business hence some of these people are ace actors and makeup artists.
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Bodhirose
/ September 16, 2010Begging can be a good business here as well. Some have made a very good living off of panhandling.
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Trisha
/ September 16, 2010there is only one thing good about begging- its better than cheating or stealing 🙂
there are millionaire beggars in India- by that i mean beggars, no hints- the real life hat stretching beggar 🙂
a few years back more than fifty thousand rupee were recovered from one of them after he passed away. it was stitched in his blanket and pillow.
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Bodhirose
/ September 17, 2010We have those same type of “beggars” here as well. Families will gather to bury their poverty stricken loved one who barely had money to eat and will come to find stashes of money reaching into the hundreds of thousands of dollars or more that they had squirreled away and wouldn’t touch!
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Trisha
/ September 17, 2010do they beg at the street corners? then they belong to the same category 🙂 🙂
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Bodhirose
/ September 17, 2010Yes, we have those who beg on the streets and end up making tens of thousands of dollars a year. At least that’s what has been reported. I’m sure it’s not too many that make that kind of money though. 🙂
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Trisha
/ September 18, 2010you remember that story by AC Doyle? In which a man made lots of money pretending as a beggar?
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Gayle
/ September 18, 2010No, I don’t remember that one. I guess it can be quite a profitable way to make a living.
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Trisha
/ September 19, 2010yes, i too think so. its a brilliant story. very touching. a young woman comes to holmes and complains that her devoted husband pretends that he is going to job, but goes to a hotel and spends his day there. ….
the result of investigation was that poor chap has lost his job and to feed his family he used to dress up as a beggar and beg. and he was earning lots of money 🙂
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Gayle
/ September 20, 2010Great story. I wonder if his wife cared that he was providing for her by begging–even though he was doing a great job of it.
I was just reminded of how Sherlock Holmes would change into disguises to get around without being recognized. Wasn’t that cool?
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Trisha
/ September 21, 2010yes. his wife was happy that he was not cheating on her. 🙂 holmes was master of disguises. loved the whole stories every little part of them. his disguise, his child spies… 🙂
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Gayle
/ September 21, 2010Fascinating, brilliant character!
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Gayle
/ September 23, 2010I don’t remember child spies either. Were these in his books or the movies–or maybe both? It’s been so long since I’ve seen the movies and I never have read all the stories.
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Trisha
/ September 23, 2010those shoe polish boys/ street urchins who acted like his spies? i have seen his serials not movies, they were both present in stories and the serials.
he gave them quite an important place in his pursuit of truth.
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Bodhirose
/ September 23, 2010They would be the perfect ones to know all about what was going on out in the streets. He knew how to use everything at hand to work for his advantage. His thinking skills were superb!
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Trisha
/ September 25, 2010his thinking skill was superb yet natural, you wont feel for a second that the writer was exaggerating.
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Bodhirose
/ September 25, 2010Very natural and realistic–I agree.
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Trisha
/ September 30, 2010i have read his stories dozens of times (Each one) yet never saw any flaw in his logic. to add up his story telling skill was just mind blowing.
what a combination!
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Bodhirose
/ September 30, 2010What a great intelligence and creativity he had–so true!
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Trisha
/ October 1, 2010another one was jules verne. i really sometimes have a sneaky suspicion that he had a timemachine 🙂
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Bodhirose
/ October 1, 2010I also was fascinated by Jules Verne’s stories. He did have a time machine! He also wrote “10,000 Leagues Under the Sea”, and “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (one of my favorites). I loved all these adventure stories and the movies made about them.
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Trisha
/ October 2, 2010i have read all his works but sadly during my late teenage so i remember them vaguely. at that time i loved every one of them.
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Bodhirose
/ October 2, 2010Jules Verne’s stories just completely captivated my imagination! He could take you to a whole new world and describe it in detail. Superb!
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trisha
/ October 4, 2010its strange how he visioned future accurately.
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Bodhirose
/ October 4, 2010He had an amazingly creative mind.
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trisha
/ October 6, 2010his mind crossed the level of surreality. just how could he do it? paint future?
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Bodhirose
/ October 6, 2010I have no idea how he could foresee so much–isn’t the mind a wonder?
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trisha
/ October 8, 2010precisely. one after another is too much. it really is a bit bewildering to guess how could he foresee future inventions so perfectly.
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Jingle
/ September 26, 2010awards,
u got to check out details yourself…
Thanks!
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Bodhirose
/ September 26, 2010Thank you, Jingle, for the heads up!
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Jamie Dedes
/ October 5, 2010Horrible. Thank goodness you got out of that one.
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Bodhirose
/ October 6, 2010Nut cases are everywhere–even snowbanks! I didn’t feel too threatened by that guy–he was too impaired…
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Faintly
/ October 12, 2010Found you!!!! Yay!
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Bodhirose
/ October 12, 2010Hi Faintly! Nice to see you here–yay!!!
Now get back in bed!
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