wishes

If wishes were horses....
Medusa doesn't know this end.
What she does know, however, is that she wishes for a food blog. especially after a daily diet of TFP and Piko, she also wants to do the kind of service to the world of gluttons/ food aficionados that these wonderful women do day after day.
But, medusa lacks two very important things:
1) A camera
2) Nice looking food to take photos of.
However, when Medusa goes to her favourite restaurant in hyderabad, and eats her favourite food she borrows crumbs' phone and takes a photo.
Her favourite food at this restaurant is pepper chicken, and it looks like this

more retail therapy

therapy for what? for the unaccountable stress cause by male company from the industrial wasteland, the loneliness of not having any pretext to venture outdoors, no one to meet, nothing to do, constant nags from pater and mater, and endless plates of fatty food from the kitchen.

so as part of therapy, stuff that medusa has bought in the last three days is as follows:
1) brought home and paid for salwar kameez from the tailors'
2) face wash
3) jute pouches for kids at hyd
4) a t shirt for fari's brother
5) a poster for the president
6) earphones for self and sister
7) pouch to keep contact lenses in
8) new contact lenses
9) new pair of specs
10) bottle of contact lens solution
11) deo
12) t shirts for self
13) decorative slippers for vijueyes
14) note book for new faculty at univ
15) leather pouch for ex-neighbour
16) wooden thing with lid for married friend
17) steel rings for self and sister
18) shirt for pater
19) sarees for mater and governess
20) small combination lock

a pretty exhaustive list isn't it? something happens to the bengalis during the festive season. they do not only shop, they also shop everywhere at the same time, the stretch between park Street and Esplanade becomes filled with people. predominant are lean young men and women, trying to bargain with t shirt, jewelry, bags, stuffed toys, under-wear and what not vendors. the book stalls are less crowded around (since none of these are stalls, only planks on the footpath, or a piece of cloth, they can never be crowded per se), but they also charge the maximum price.

looking like some kind of freak with extremely short hair that sticks to the scalp, doesn't at all help in the bargaining process. the shopkeepers take medusa for a dud (its interesting how more and more people seem to be doing so), and undoubtedly ask for higher prices. her rapid chattering in hindi and bengali do not help the situation, and medusa inevitably jostles with the throng with the nagging suspicion that everyone got a better deal than her.

that doesn't stop her from shopping though.

MEN!

medusa repeats, MEN!!!!
You can not do without them, but the very fact of having to do with them is so very troublesome and headache inducing.
and this "doing" has nothing whatsoever to do with THE DOING.
anyway, medusa got paid on Wednesday, and that being the last day at work, for a good forty days to come, everyone was in a hurry to leave. Medusa chose to leave with the men, and boy, did she make a mistake.
they changed the route at the last moment, and being outvoted 4 to 1, she could not do anything about it. and then they proceeded to be absolutely charming while she was all set to hate their guts. and then they dragged her over half of south bengal in a journey that lasted five hours, and at the end of it all, medusa was drained, ready to not repeat any of it ever again.
like she said already, men!!! (makes pukey face and shudders).

retail therapy

medusa has nothing to do at calcutta. no one to meet, nothing to look forward to.
so she does all the family's shopping, and then some more.
these are the things she bought today, which involved several hours of uninterrupted walking through very very very very crowded streets. nobody beats the bengalis during the festive season, they are out in force, ready to beat you to the next bargain, making travel by any means impossible. this is the reason medusa had to walk for two and a half hours to reach home (with a few shopping breaks in between).
anyway, the things are:
1. two very expensive, but nice, hair cuts, from jawed habib's. for sister and self. medusa's attendant was a nice delhitite called hassan, while the sister's attendant did not speak.
2. fancy shiny pumps for sister
3. fridge magnets for home
4. earrings
5. gift for birthday person day after tomorrow
6. nose pin for medusa which she can't wear
7. a pen
8. pair of floaters for the sister
9. shirt for cousin
10. shirt for fari
11. jasmine green tea and apple/mint jam
12. jute bag
13. ointment for skin
14. hair oil
15. a chicken roll for sustenance
16. vests for the father
17. handmade soaps for the sister and friends
18. walnut face scrub for medusa
19. jholas for friends and the sister and medusa
20. bottle of water for sustenance

all in all, it was a good day's shopping, if only medusa had some of her salary still left.

more from the industrial wasteland

yesterday medusa went to the nearby big market with seven of her colleagues/ neighbours. needless to say, they are all male, and very very reluctant to make conversation/ hang out with medusa.
a lifetime with four other people in two cramped rooms, and then six years in a filled beyond capacity hostel with very very friendly neighbours, has made medusa averse to any kind of solitude. and this place is brimming with solitude, at the department, in the corridors, at the canteen, where not. the moments between classes (and they are too long to be called moments) and after them, the endless mornings and the very very long evenings, trapped inside one's room, medusa becomes desperate.
and so she very kindly favours them with her glorious companionship. but she forgets, they are many, while she is one, and they have each other, and could do very well without some unwanted female company, especially one that is not petite with long hair.
(seriously, what is it with long hair and men? why can't they have long hair on themselves?)
soon they will send out disclaimers stating that they do not endure her out of their own volition, but are forced into submission.
but last night was nice, the trip to and from the market, and then the gala feast they prepared and then very graciously invited her to.
here's to friendships of boredom, till they blossom into something more meaningful.

posting from the heart of an industrial wasteland

medusa thanks the powers that be for this amazing technological intervention called wireless internet.
now, sitting in middle of this industrial wasteland, medusa does not have to only look out into NH41 and smell the cloying, decaying, asphyxiating toxins emanating from the sugar factory next door. when she looks outside her window, she does not only see rows upon rows of lorries standing motionless on the highroad, mud coloured red with the iron dust flying everywhere, people stealing from the motionless trucks, bribed policemen guarding them, and a portico littted with cow dung and other essential features of rural life.
instead, she can pretend to live in manhattan and eat bentos, watch reruns of "how i met your mother" and blog about her once again meaningless life.
oh for the joys of technology.

Relief

medusa had to go to work tomorrow, even though she was not supposed to, coz some technicalities had to be attended to.
then Kb messaged and told her she can NOT come, and "oh, the difference to me".
Medusa kept the phone down, jumped up and down in joy, raced through the two rooms and tried to do a little tap dance.
the joy of not having to get up early.