Thursday, December 25, 2008

this is a section of a cut tree trunk. i have always been fascinated by such things, things that are "natural", "tree-y" etc. remember highway dhabas and adventure stories on tv that would use tree stumps as seats? these beautiful people will always have the most beautiful lives and what not, and nature seemed so, well, natural.....
but now that there are a profusion of tree trunks, and barely any trees, most of my fascination is gone. all i wish for is some less dust, some more trees, some peace and shade.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

you need to vacate!

Christmas season has brought unexpected cheer.
since last June Medusa had been living to the tune of "all my bags are packed, I'm ready to go".
the room was to have been renovated in June (having been partially renovated in march and in April), so Medusa packed all her belongings and  put them on top of the cupboard. in June. and she has been living off a suitcase with a single book to show in terms of research ever since. the threat of renovation never went away, and now people all around are moving in and out of their rooms, and getting swanky tiled floors and five plug points as a fringe benefit.
Medusa also pulled up her socks and arranged a spare room to move into for the time being. she packed a suitcase for clothes and hugged her (new)laptop, and informed the supervisor: "bhaiya, my room is empty, you can come and re tile my floor".
the bhaiya said, "But ma dame, you need not get your room renovated. we are going to demolish it instead."

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

non-new year resolutions

today in the remedial course class ( remedial classes for students at the institute, sorry, at the university, who feel that they are weak in english, I am teaching in that class by the way, not learning, contrary to what the linguistic skill displayed in my blog might suggest)I was trying to explain to the kiddos the meaning of the term new year's resolution.
in the past ten years, i had never come across someone who didn't know what the term meant, or one who hadn't made a resolution. but this kids didn't, and hadn't.
which got me thinking about the kind of people who feel the need to make resolutions, repeatedly, and about myself, who has been making the same resolutions for the past three years or so.
leaving aside chronic losers like Bridget Jones (though at the end of both Bridget Jones' Diary and The Edge of Reason she is anything but a loser, despite all the false starts and idiosyncrasies, she has won in love)and similar chick lit heroins desperately fighting bulges and the discourse of failed romance, who are the people who make resolutions?
there is me for starters,i feel that i am hopelessly unorganised, without any priorities in life, and in constant peril of losing focus. therefore a resolution, made almost monthly, should keep me on track.
the real picture however is very different. i often do not even remember that there are such things as resolutions or that i have made one, if i remember that i have made a resolution, i conveniently forget its contents. but more than anything else, there are so many things going wrong, and i am so disoriented/ lazy/ scared/ arrogant, that a nagging resolution at the back of my mind does nothing to resolve the mess that is my life.
take the resolve to lose weight as a case in point.
i have been fat all my life, and have wanted to lose weight for the equal amount of time. and the only times i manage to lose weight are when i am in the initial days of falling in love, with a fluttering heart and a losing appetite. but chronic falling in love is not a good idea, not for studies and for other assorted relationships that continue even when love disappears.
so, the bottom-line remains that keeping up resolutions are not for the weak hearted, in this case, moi.
but making resolutions should be anyone's cuppa tea, be the super-perfect planner or the OCD or whoever.
this brings me back to the my original question, who are the people who do not make resolutions? are they perfect? or merely content?



Monday, September 08, 2008

down and out

woke up feeling terribly ill. nothing surprising, medusa always feels sick when it is time to wake up. she can only dream of days when there will be nothing to do and nowhere to go and no reason to wake up, save the one why one should anyway wake up, that is, one is no longer asleep.
having spent most of her life this way, medusa is now horrifically pressed for time, and the few hours of sleep are invariably disturbed, coming only in snatches and snatched away by the recurring fear of not being able to get up on time.
this is what growing up means, doesn't it? not being able to not do anything because one doesn't feel up to?
now there are commitments to meet, promises to keep and work to be done.
hate this life.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

where has all the money gone?

yesterday at the great indian parliamentary circus, the BJP MPs waved 1 crore rupees, allegedly given to them as bribes by the Congress. the money was taken away and a probe directed.

news channels quickly showed various party spokesmen throwing allegations and counter allegations. " yes, the BJP memebers were right to bring the money to the parliament, where has our democracy come down to if honourable politicans try to poach MPs from other parties?" "It's all a ploy to take attention away from the fact that we were going to win the trust motions!!!!" "How can 1 crore rupess come in such a small bag@##$$%" and so on and so forth.

what struck us was something quite simple. if this money was indeed given as bribe, then those who showed it in the parliament and therefore got it confiscated must have risen above greed. or have enough of their own.

but if this was just a ploy to disrupt the trust vote, and they were bandying their own money about, then one has to seriously wonder about their faculty of foresight, because that money is well and truly gone.

Sunday, February 24, 2008


nice film. but definitely not worth the hundred rupees i had to fish out at the multiplex.
would have been great had i got the dvd (moserbear, cost 34/-) and watched it at home.
but tis ok, though one wonders what happened to all the beautiful oh so beautiful people that used to flock film screens? the princess was decidedly non princessy.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

japanese weekend





this is what medusa has been up to this weekend, having forgotten status as a full time ph d student, has been indulging in a little bit of cultural exploration of the Japanese.
and the result: AWESOME.
"bubble fiction: boom or bust" has the most handsome hero ever, hiroshi obe, i bow to thee.
"always- sunset on 3rd street" is as if lifted from the comic books it is based on, frame by frame.
and murakami, medusa wonders why didn't she discover him earlier. his books are not just delightful, they are also filled with the characters medusa admires the most, precise, efficient, clean people, who have an interestingly bizarre life nevertheless.
therefore, these four are, must reads and must watchs.