medusastoned

long long time

2011-10-15T08:35:00.004+05:30

It's been forever it seems, or as usual Medusa is hyperbolic. If one carefully and patiently looks through this blog's archives, there will definitely be longer periods of silence and even longer absences. But as medusa is neither patient nor careful, she will just let her hyperbole be, and wonder, whether, in blog-world, silences and absences can be differentiated between?

However, as usual, that is not the point. The point is, after a recent trip to Shillong and Cherapunji, Medusa returned to a boiling Calcutta with an obsessive desire to live (and in extension- to work) in a place like this:

Ok, not exactly down a winding road covered on all sides with tall pines (for that matter, while passing by this road Medusa didn't even know that these were pines trees), but in a hilly-ish place, that's cool/cold, close enough to civilization to offer uninterrupted high speed internet access and medical shops, slightly far away from bus stops etc. to make walking mandatory, and on the outskirts of a city filled with restaurants and shops.

Why, you ask? Its been a recurrent fancy for a while now, but having spent a few days in a hilly place for the first time in her life, she is smitten by the quiet, the possibilities of exploration and long walks, the climate, and yes, the promises of ever elusive work! With no other temptation in sight, she will have to work, won't she?

The Taking of a College

2011-06-05T08:40:00.003+05:30

Now, the hellhole where Medusa works, was the last bastion of the CPM, at the heart of the Industrial Wasteland. Industrial Wasteland had long been lost to them, the Loksabha seat, the other colleges and the shramik bhavan. The one who used to rule this place was now not even allowed to stand in the assembly elections, and good for him! Because even the formidable NS who stood for CPM lost.

Anyway, that is just background baloney. What continued to be interesting was that despite the entire area more or less having turned, or made to turn TMC, the ruling union at the hellhole continued to be SFI, which everyone knows is just yet another name for CPM. Every year before the admissions and before the elections (a selection actually) there were muted noises about how "this time TMCP is going to come to college", but nothing happened. At the admissions all the students who managed to pay the union got in, paying their college fees and SFI membership fee (for three years) at the same time, during the elections no one other than the "party" approved candidates filled in nomination forms, and there was a due celebration for them having won "uncontested", yet again.

but day before yesterday, it changed.

Medusa was trying to beat the heat by seeking shelter in one of the science departments: they are scientific so they have AC. They heard some muffled slogans from a distance, and ventured out in the heat to investigate. Medusa is not so nosy, but slogans in a college deserted due to vacations and exams, were something that just begged to be found out. What she found out was the following:

There were about fifty men holding TMC flags, and loitering around the Principal's office. They were NOT students, they had possibly never been students. They were big burly men, ill at ease inside the college, but taking their time to let the office staff know that all this vacation and all is bull shit. the college must be open at all times, after all it is their money that the staff is being paid on.

While the strongmen guarded the outside, the Principal was closeted inside with the few who were actually students of the college, or of some college. They were placing their demands: and what were their demands? That they be given the same privileges that SFI had been given all this time.

Now this might sound strange, but it is not. All these years, beyond the first twenty people admitted in a class, all the rest of the students have come through the SFI office located conveniently outside. They have regularly asked for the admission form prices to be hiked: so that their share of that money increases- who cares for those who will actually buy the forms? Attendance in classes is not necessary, neither is pass marks in any of the exams. What was necessary was presence in the CPM rallies and donation to the fund. If this be the mode of politics in an institution- the students's union acting as yet another organ of a very well oiled machine: cogs of which are the Principal who belongs to the same union whose sister organ is the union that the teachers belong to, which falls under the same banner that the office staff organize themselves under- and all cowering under the might of the mighty Bikash Bhavan where hopes and spirits are crushed and demands annihilated (unless you know someone strong enough in the party)- and where politics is reduced to lobbying for transfer/ selling the seat to the highest bidder, what else can a new party, trying to make its mark even hope to achieve? Their members are the same, their field of operation is the same, their imagination of what a student's union could/ should do, continues to be the same. The names have changed, and the flags have been swapped, but the structures retain their internal logic where the government and the various allied "political" organisations ensure co-dependence by killing off all possibilities of politics.

What will happen now is: the two groups will fight each other for who should control more seats during the admission, who will more successfully foil the others' attempts at filing nominations at the elections, who will bring more people to their rallies (actually, its unlikely the SFIs will have any rally to go to!), who will bring burlier individuals to beat up rival students and who will organise the saraswati pujo. Obviously, no one will talk about the fact that the girl students have to go to loos that has not had running water in three years, or that there is no drinking water in the college, or that there should to be new courses introduced or that there ought to be remedial classes for the weak and backward students.

And more and more of them will continue to drop out because they got a job at the factory across the highroad, or they got married.

what do fucking fitness advice columnists know?

2011-02-17T00:12:00.005+05:30

Now, everyone knows that Medusa is addicted to women's magazines, and she justifies her daily devouring them in the name of archival research.
what everyone might not know is, medusa also believes in them. every trick that will make one lose weight, or make one's skin glow or turn the frizzy mess on her head into soft and alluring curls, medusa believes. the emphasis in the previous sentence however, is on the word "trick". anything that requires hard work or repetition, medusa steers clear of. after all, reiteration has produced gender, medusa can't possibly take on something as powerful as that! what attracts her are the quick fixes, and easy DIYs.
so, there was this piece in the magazine today, called "climbing workout". which basically promises that climbing up and down stairs is the best form of workout one can have, and that running up the stairs can make one lose 1000 cal in an hour!
medusa quickly did some mental math and lured by the promises of a non-bulging belly, forgot all her pledges to the fat pride movement (fat pride is only present in capitalist countries after all- she told herself, us below poverty line losers have to deal with other more "real" stuff) and put on her walking shoes.
yes she does have them, two pairs, and walking music too.
having thus prepared herslef she climbed 54 steps down, and climbed 54 up, and 54 down again and then 54 up again.
and then she came indoors and lay on the floor panting for dear life.
what do these fucking advice columnists know? do they know that it is impossible to run up stairs, and that to do so for one full hour is bloody unimaginable. and that it is better to cuddle up to a person with some flab, that the stick thin insects that must be dying from a lack of calories in their systems.
fat pride, here we come!

trendsetter medusa!

2011-01-21T20:14:00.006+05:30

Did y0u, dear readers know, how well versed Medusa is in the fashions of the years to come? in fact, so well advanced she is in matters of fashion-to-be, that during the moments of trendsetting, her fellows consider her to be a mad hatter, a kind of a modern day mohamed-bin-tughlaq, visionary, yet misunderstood.
anyway, to prove that medusa is not bullshitting as usual, she will present her case point by point.

Point one: The curious case of the pants with their crotch at their knees

Everyone knows what Medusa is talking about, because everyone has either owned/ worn/ or at least seen someone wear them- they are Harem pants!

But when in the 11th std., in the year 1998-99, Medusa used to wear a pair of black and white striped ones to college, her pater and her sister used to cringe at the mere sight of it, begging her to change into something more suitable, and not quite baggy. being the visionary that she is, medusa never obliged, and ten years down the line, the same sister is now begging for Harem pants!

does medusa gloat? no she doesn't, because her revolutionary vision doesn't stop with this single instance!

Point two: The case of the black nail polish!

When in college, Medusa and the one who taught her to smoke, discovered the joys of black nail polish- and how did the revolutionary left-leaning intellectuals inhabiting the canteen make fun of them? reared on safe browns and pale pinks, black was beyond their imaginary, it destabilized the norms of beauty and desirablity- and what more proof of the historicity of such norms, than the fact that black nail polish is now, a decade later, flaunted by the sexiest heroines ever?

Point three: CHICK LIT!

So, while in M Phil, she had to explain to the omniscient supervisor of hers what chick lit meant, and how there was an Indian version of it that she was interested in looking at.
Now in her Ph D, everyone is either working on it, has read one or the other, and in some cases, is even writing it! Didn't Medusa know that angst over love, fat and shopping will eventually bring in even those with the unbearable lightness of being?

So, what do the above mentioned three things prove?
Not merely that Medusa is ahead of her time, but that for their own good, the people of the world should recognize her as such, not simply to boost her ego, but also to prepare themselves for the years and fashion to come.

Hot tip for the next decade: waist chain!

slight nagging thought brought on by the statistician: the gap between medusa's pioneering acts of fashion and when the rest of the world finally catches up with her seems to be decreasing. form 13 years to 10, and in the case of chick lit- only 3. if this continues, will medusa one day follow fashion trends and not set them?

What is the need to speak for Arundhati Roy?

2010-11-28T07:34:00.007+05:30

Medusa does not want to have to defend Arundhati Roy- and there are two reasons for it. One: she is perfectly capable of defending herself (just take a look at the impassioned note from Kashmir after the first rumours of sedition charges started- and ignore the overtly sappy nature of the thing); second: Medusa does not always agree with her.

In fact, more than disagreeing, as someone who is constantly trying to figure out the meaning of what is it to be an academic and an activist, an intellectual and a participant in mass movements, Medusa finds Roy's positions to be more often than not, disconcerting. She is like the Shahrukh Khan of people's movements: lending her star presence to movements while not being organically connected to any of them. She has been to Narmada, to Nandigram, and now, to Kashmir.

Given that, being an organic intellectual, is not the sine qua non for having an opinion, and expressing it. And if you are as beautiful, articulate, and famous as Roy is, it at times becomes a moral imperative to express it, because if you do it, it makes news. Prime time, English daily news.

And that is what makes it imperative on the Delhi High court to cry for charges of sedition. It gets quickly sidelined that they implicate Geelani- one who has been talking about Kashmir for ever, and one who gets the shoe thrown at him, as well. Roy makes the headline, and both her supporters and detractors cry themselves hoarse. As a fellow curly- haired person medusa is stunned at the comicality of it all- after all "sedition"? Is this the same Indian state whose fervent attempts to decolonize its past, nevertheless provides it with a blinkered vision where colonial laws are good while it keeps out the "deviants"?

The "Sesh Kotha" by Suman Mitra in the latest issue of Desh advises the readers that "It is best for Democracy to ignore them (the likes of Roy)". The page-long article compares Roy to Jane Fonda who was "rightly" ignored by Richard Nixon when she kept on protesting against the Vietnam war. By conflating Kashmir with Vietnam, and the Indian government with Nixon, the writer make his ideological underpinnings clear; but he leaves medusa wondering, why is it so easy for the champions of the nation-state, of textbook-ish understanding of democracy and the supposed anti-fundamentalists to be so righteous all the time? Who answers for the fundamentalism of self-righteousness: both in Roy and her detractors like the one just mentioned?

Reading and reflecting on the fat studies reader- one

2010-11-14T13:18:00.002+05:30

Medusa has always been fat. Ever since she can remember, visitng shoe stores and shops that sell clothes have always been the stuff that nightmares are made of. While the polite Marwari shopkeepers would tell her parents that since “baby is healthy, she needs a size bigger than the others of her age”, the not-so-polite Bengali ones will tell her parents that fat children need clothes that fit older kids.

As a result she always wore frocks that reached her ankles, and jeans that had to be rolled up ten times.

Shoes were something else. She remembers walking down the length and breadth of College Street with mater, looking for a pair of shoes that will fit her, and coming up with zilch. Mater screaming and shouting, humiliated by the shoe-store assistants who would either take one look at her feet and claim that they did not have her size, or try and wrestle her feet into impossibly small pairs and insist that they fit.

So, consider medusa’s amazement when she recently went back to photos of herself when she was at school. She saw a young girl who was no-fatter and no-thinner than most of her peers, a very active young girl who used to dance and debate, take part in every damn thing that happened at school, found the time to study and fall in love repeatedly, play games and often win races, and fill notebooks with gibberishes of an average teenager’s life.

So what happened? How did this active young girl make herself believe that she was the fattest of everyone she knew?

At this ripe old age, medusa has been advised by all medical practitioners, starting from the GP to the gynecologist, the endocrinologist and the dermatologist that she needs to lose weight, ASAP. The first thing that most people say to her when they meet her is either “you’ve lost so much weight” or “have you put on a bit of weight”?

But do they know of the conspiracy that they are part of, that is driven by the multi million dollar weight loss industries and pharmaceutical companies, that tend to look at fat as merely a health hazard and not a fact of life?

Have they ever heard of “Health at Every Size”? Truth be told, Medusa hadn’t either till this day, but now that she is reading the Fat Studies reader, many more such awesome things are waiting to be found out.

So, more on this, as Medusa continues to find out fascinating stuff.

Jobless In Bombay day 3

2010-10-22T10:53:00.004+05:30

Medusa's in Bombay, supposedly looking after little sister. but weirdest things do happen, little sister seems to have become capable of looking after herself, feeding herself, reaching work on time and even commute in a strange city. and she seems to be doing it all with a lot more confidence than medusa, when medusa does venture out of the sanctuary that her friend's place affords her.

the little that she's seen of Bombay, marks it as a city of apartment buildings and shops. obviously, there must be houses and other things, but apartment buildings, in all kinds of shapes and sizes crowd her vision when she looks out of the 5th floor flat in Andheri where her friend stays. the 11th floor flat at Marol where her sister is, is nestled between similar flats on all sides, and sister claims that the only view she gets from her office at Malad is one of apartment blocks.

funny thing is, medusa doesn't like houses. ideally she would love to live in a hostel/ hotel type arrangement, where if the light bulb is fused you can go to the technical section and get them to fix it, where the cleaning of bathrooms and corridors are done by others without you having to open the door for them, or even having to buy cleaning supplies, where the only thing she needs to care about is whether privacy is guaranteed once she shuts the door.
think about it, you don't have to go beyond the next couple of rooms for friends. food or company; in a hostel, people are awake almost at all hours, and such close proximity of people ensures that you have computer wizards, film collectors and ace chefs close at hand.

yes, this is medusa's wishful longing for life at the university, even though she hated it and thought that she had grown beyond it, while she was here full-time, but now that she comes for fleeting visits and fully immerses herself in the process of discussing anything and everything, along with the likelihood of bitching about people, she never wants to go back.

hot and bothered

2010-08-11T17:55:00.003+05:30

Last night Medusa came back from work all hot and sweaty, fuming and cursing. she had been travelling since three in the afternoon, in what ought to be a pleasant monsoon weather, but instead is blinding, scorching, sweat-inducing summer. medusa cursed all those who never have to trek for ten minutes in the heart of the industrial wasteland, where there is no shade, and only heat, she abused those who do not travel at the back of a "super", which prides itself in travelling at break-neck speed, and therefore filling its occupants with a maximum of iron dust and industrial pollution. not to mention the sun. the blinding, head-aching sun.

and when she reached home, there was no power. presumably because at this unexpected heat wave the use of ACs had gone up again. fat load of good a power cut does. those who had been taking much earned rest after a long day slaving in front of computers at an air conditioned office, having travelled to and fro in air conditioned vehicles, would simply use up some more fossil fuel and keep the AC on.

How will they ever know the the pleasure of having one's own sweat trickle down one's back, making the bed and the pillow soak, when one's hanky gets wetter than an wet tissue, and the gloom cast by the absence of electric light?

Medusa knows that individual actions of eco-friendly-ness will not stop the downward spiral in which the earth's weather seems to have gone. but what is to be done? it seems so bloody hopeless that ranting about the bourgeoisie who take taxis and use ACs brings about more pleasure than harping on and on about nameless-faceless individuals and interests that control corporations.

in the meantime, the temperatures rise. you may control the weather that you live in, but can you control the weather in which your food is grown? and if you can't, then aren't you and medusa in the same sinking boat, and shouldn't you be doing something about it?

Rajneeti= Mahabharata + The Godfather

2010-06-05T20:56:00.006+05:30

It seems Nikhat Kazmi said it before Medusa did, but Medusa did figure it out all by herself, and had immense fun figuring out which character in the film corresponds to which one in which epic, because yes, even The Godfather is an epic.

Medusa can name half a dozen people who draw a large part of their insights from the Godfather, the book, and she herself is one of them. She's not going do the rounds of the quotable quotes, instead, talk a bit about how the Godfather parts of the film makes it smarter and catchier than the Mahabharata parts do.

To start with, brothers and in the second generation, cousins fight with each other in their desire to control the politics of a state, one flanked by the Dalit Ajay Devgan, and the other by the so called uncle- Nana Patekar. Most of the cast manages to die, how, Medusa's not too sure about the details, since as soon as she understood someone was going to die (which she did every time, after all she does know her Godfather) she closed her eyes to that condition that makes her afraid of anticipation of violence and misery on screen. In the end, there was the pretty Katrina, now the chief minister of the state, by virtue of being a political widow, and Ranbir Kapoor- the Michael Corleone meets Arjuna.

Some things never change though: Katrina still can not act or do anything to save her life, apart from look pretty, and my gawd, she is pretty. Medusa doesn't figure what the hype was all about though, given that she's doesn't occupy much footage in the film. Manoj Bajpayee continues to be an awesome actor, and its great to see him after so long, as does Nana Patekar. Ajay Devgan does his usual, intense and wronged young man act, while Arjun Rampal looks so young and thin, one wonders what all torture his body and face must have had to go through. ( BUT HE DOES LOOK VERY VERY HOT). Ranbir does what he had to do, look serious and deliver dialogues.

The pleasant surprise was how the director/ screen writer, made Ranbir' American girlfriend play the parts of both Michael's first girl friend and second wife Kay Adams and his Italian wife, Apollonia; making her the only voice of concern/ ethics in the middle of all this plotting and killing, as well as killing her off slightly unnecessarily.

In short, the hall was houseful and the crowd seemed to love it. Medusa liked it, and might as well recommend it.

2010-05-12T17:08:00.006+05:30

This post could start fairly predictably, claiming April to be the cruelest month. Except for the fact that April is past, the calendar's well into may, but the summer refuses to become less cruel. So much so, that there is a new word doing the rounds of newspaper weather reports, "discomfort level", calculated on the basis of maximum temperature and relative humidity, and one can say stuff like "yesterday's discomfort level was at 67.5". However, since when did mere numbers manage to sum up experiences?One of medusa's recent favourite songs go something like this:
"Strawberries, cherries and an angel's kiss in spring,
MY summer wine is really made from all these things"
And you've got to hear it to really feel it, it reminds you of a season that's almost mythical in its vegetable bounty, the fruits and the produce. the bright green leaves coming out after they had all fallen off during the winter.....
Kind of like this
bright, and cheerful.
The reality is however stark! Its filled with itches, heat rashes, acne, sweat and stomach upsets, with loss of appetite, lack of sleep, power cuts, a complete disruption of movement during the daytime, thanks to the sun, and a complete all-consuming desire for the liquid, the cool, the cold, the rain.
fantasies of a sea beachMedusa wants to go somewhere, away from this heat and heart/head ache, where the sun doth shine, but a trifle mildly.

p.s. the photographer suffers in this heat worse than medusa has ever seen anyone suffer, and medusa wishes to take the photographer away, where they'll eat, drink and make merry in the gentle breeze, feel the trickle of cool water in their toes and soak in the rain.

2010-04-25T09:10:00.001+05:30

count the number of bangles in medusa's collection while she goes and wrestles the heat!

2010-04-07T14:49:00.002+05:30

This is what Medusa stumbled upon last November at the old New Market. Of course, the new market is merely another name for the S. S. Hogg market, and the old new market is the one which got burnt some decades ago, and was rebuilt. And the new new market is the one that was built next to, which is multi-storeyed, and lacks the circular structure of the old one, where all lanes converge into the small space in the middle that housed the canon that gets filled with christmas bling, come the end of the year.
But medusa digresses. Keep aside ruminations on the charms of the old new market, medusa's fascination with it can fill many many blog posts. instead, let medusa direct her attention towards this fine mannequin and the finer pieces of lingerie on display, complete with the price tag and all. also note the handbill-type piece of paper that very delicately covers the dummy's decolletage.
but, the more interesting thing to ponder is, why is the mannequin lit? Is it lit in order to display the lingerie best, given that part of it is transparent, and wont leave much to the imagination? and the lit dummy demonstrates exactly how much it reveals?
Medusa's gray cells can not solve the mystery behind this lighting fixture. can you?

the unthinkable

2010-04-04T10:04:00.002+05:30

Medusa has done the unthinkable, and also the most embarrassing. While trying to follow one of the followers of her blog, she managed to follow herself :-( and doesn't know to get out of it.
And, doesn't know how to view the web pages of her followers, of that of anyone else's followers either. when she clicks on their icons/photos, all she gets is a list of the sites they have joined, and a link that encourages her to send a message to them.
so, basically, this post is a plea for help. help medusa figure out how to follow the followers.

Nail polish of the week

2010-03-30T15:25:00.005+05:30

Thanks to complete and utter joblessness and acute, all-consuming boredom, medusa has fashioned a new weekly blog post which promises to consist of the outrageous colour that medusa and her sister wear on their nails that week.
So here you are, dear reader, the nail polish of the week:

2010-03-17T09:10:00.005+05:30

A lot, and medusa means A LOT, of people ask medusa, now that she's rich and still living off her parents, what does she do with her money? How come she has no savings, no bank account and no properties? In the following few lines, medusa attempts to offer a few explanations.
See, the primitive place where she works, medusa gets paid in cash in a brown envelop, in cash. she brings it home, all 159 kms, and puts it on the top shelf of her parents' almirah. then, as and when she needs money, she takes money out of that envelop.
and buys:

or:
or:
untill the envelop is empty and its time for the next pay envelop.

throat ache

2010-03-07T22:12:00.002+05:30

medusa's throat aches. it ached last night and it is aching tonight. atleast it s better than a heartache. and waaaay better than a tooth ache.
when medusa was doing her MA, one prof told the class how once when he was travelling in Italy (yeah, medusa knows, show off!) , he was suddenly doubled up with acute pain. but he dint know what the pain was, or what the cause of the pain was . that's something about pains, the pain in itself is never considered to be the problem. the problem is always something more deep-rooted, something else. the pain is merely the symptom, as a friend put it today, the real reason lies elsewhere, and eradicating it, will help eradicate the pain.
anyway, as usual medusa digresses. anyway, so this prof did not know what the pain he was experiencing was. and he had to visit a doctor proceeded to tell him that he was suffering from a toothache. the prof was using the example to explain to us how all knowledge, including knowledge that is experiential, is built on knowledge that is pre-existent.
obviously medusa disagreed with him. medusa thought, "what kind of a dumbass doesn't know his tooth is aching when his tooth aches?"
but, medusa had spoken too soon. four years later when she had an ache, she thought she had caught a cold and so something in the thorat/ ear region was aching. so she proceeded to drink a lot of warm water over the next week, but then the ache did not go down. so she covered her ear and lay on her right side to keep it warm. even then the ache did not go. then she went to an ENT, by the end of the third week, who rushed her to a dentist and she had to get a root canal done. she had to bow to the superior intelligence of her prof then.
now that there is yet another throat ache, medusa is kinda concerned.

2010-02-22T09:27:00.003+05:30

it hurts so much that for once it seems easier to abandon the third person narrative. it seems impossible to hide behind medusa, now that most certainties have been dismissed and all uncertainties and fears have come true.
have always known self to hurt physically when sad. but this time beats all other previous times. i walk in a haze of headaches, slow, dull throbbing behind the forehead, inability to look at anything that is bright, or hear anything that is loud. things around me appear to be covered in some kind of dull powdery grains that shrivel up to my touch. my unhappiness hangs around me like a limp curtain that i can touch, but never move.
had always prided self on being able to sleep sadness off, but now can no longer sleep. waking up means headaches, but still, every morning is a battle with wakefulness, the attempt to hold on to the comfort and safety of pillows and blankets, the need to quench the all-consuming thirst without getting off the bed.
i'm thirsty, and aching.

fat flat feet

2010-02-13T20:23:00.006+05:30

its time to be brutal with herself.
for the past six weeks, which have been the busiest in her life, alternating between the industrial wasteland and weddings, either starving or over eating delicious fatty food, medusa has been diligently trying to shop for the perfect pair of shoes. actually, the perfect couple of pairs. one has to keep her feet covered (given the sticky nature of the red, heavy dust that settles over everything in the industrial wasteland) and the other has to make her feet look elegant, to go with the very expensive sarees she was to be wearing at the wedding.
in the process, she has bought four pairs in the last four weeks, and tried on several of the sixteen pairs she brought back with her from the university. but each one of them, with the sole exception of the oshos, hurt her feet.

The very expensive woodlands floaters hurt both her little toes, the almost as expensive bata sneakers hurt her big toes, some weird colour comes off everytime she tries to wear the cheap khadims slippers, and the very cheap bata slippers that she bought from the men's section hurt the top of her feet. they were also responsible for her spraining her ankle the day before the grand wedding reception party of her cousin, in which medusa had to lug a 6kg heavy saree with a sprained ankle. the very pretty slippers that kaatib gifted, alas do not fit her anymore. and today, medusa went out and bought yet another pair, before hitting the weighing machine near the shoe shop.
and that's when the realization hit. the shoe shops haven't all become more insensitive to bigger women, they continue to be as insensitive as they used to be, medusa has only gotten bigger. her feet have gotten bulkier, the ankles now resemble those of a football player- so much so that her pretty anklets now resemble ankle-cuffs. her cheeks have been bugling for quite sometime, but medusa thought that was because her eyes had been sinking inwards, and she has taken to really filling out all her clothes, in fact filling them so much that bits and pieces, more like lumps and bumps, have started sticking out.

with great sadness medusa announces that she's try to lose weight, from tomorrow.

2010-01-24T23:11:00.002+05:30

this hopefully wiil be the first in what proposes to be medusa's maiden (couldn't resist the alliteration eh? ) venture into food blogging. the reason: since reading about food is so delightful, couldn't it be equally awesome to write it too?
kidding! medusa likes to take pictures of food, and relive moments of gastro-visual delight, an what better way to put it up on the blog?
this is a shot of biscuits piled up in one of the back lanes of New Market, the place medusa goes to burn money.
some thoughts on biscuits: medusa doesn't like them, unless they are covered in/ filled with chocolate or some salty-spicy mixture that rubs against the upper palate and after 500gms or so, causes medusa to wince with every bite. medusa just doesn't get the whole coffee/tea +biscuit in the morning deal. medusa's family acts as if they'd get heart attacks unless medusa takes a bite of some tasteless marie biscuit and burn the tip of her tongue sipping some heavily sugared tea.
medusa insists, what is the big deal? why is it difficult to wake up/ take a crap/ speak/ and even at times, brush, without the tea and biscuit. there is something seriously warped in the socialization of these people whose parents did not think twice about getting them addicted to such warm beverages while morally scoffing at far more exciting counterparts like a fag/ booze.

From Medusa to Bantu

2009-12-20T11:55:00.005+05:30

Medusa had hair like this, or so she used to believe. so she started a blog and called herself medusa, and started intermittently caring for for her curly hair, doing weird stuff like hot oil/ hot towel treatment, deep conditioning and such stuff.
but there was the fact that Kaatib (at deadletterhouse.blogspot.com) likes her hair shorter, and there is always much much less hassle with shorter hair: no need to comb, or tie or do various things that will hide her fast receding hairline. so come summer, when her hair grows till her shoulders, medusa cuts it off.

but little did medusa know that soon she will have to join the great workforce comprising of suburban men in the heart of the industrial wasteland. it is not enough that every time she comes out to the corridor itsy-bitsy students look at her as if they are witnessing an alien invasion in their idyllic hometown. medusa knew that short hair/ curly long hair- both have this effect on unsuspecting by standers in places that are not the institute or the heart of megacity. but she also hoped that her colleagues who claim to be men of the world will not be hit by the shortness of it. even though they were hit, they did take it with significant good grace, having nicknamed her Bantu and claimed that her head looks more or less like this:

london nightmare

2009-11-15T10:01:00.001+05:30

Such a clichéd title for a review of a film called “London Dreams”. But medusa could not think of anything more apt, something that would convey the exact sense of hopelessness and terror at having spent 200/- on a film that failed to entertain, enliven, let alone engage.

Medusa had not watched a Salman Khan film in five years or so, and London Dreams proved that such abstinence was in good measure. He is like a baboon imitating human gestures, filling the screen with energy, but little else. He looks old, wears gross clothes and has horrible hair. All of which is fine, but acting?

London Dreams is the name of the band that Ajay Devgan builds, to fulfill his childhood dream of playing at the Wembley Stadium. In this process he loses family and friends, grows up alone on the streets of London, controls his love for pretty groupie Asin and whips his sexual desire into submission in a very Opus Dei manner.

And when the dream seems within his grasp, brings from home childhood mate Salman, who is a rake and a talented one. Salman proceeds to become a better and more famous singer, faster at winning Asin’s love and the press’s adulation!! Obviously hard working Devgan gets upset, and with help from oh-so-hot guitarist Ranvir sets to ruin Salman….

The story moves way too fast to keep track of anything that’s happening, everything is on the surface level for the viewer to pick an d choose from. Medusa is not one to dwell over the lack of realism, like why don’t they ever eat, or how did young Devgan grow up to the middle aged rocker without a visa or any money, or when did the passage from India to England become so smooth, or exactly how naïve are Asin’s parents?

But the real problems with the film lie in the way the tiny story stretches itself over 2 hours and 45 minutes, needing to fill the gaps with music, how a film about music and passion has poor songs, worse composition, and how introspection is achieved only during lashes of the belt. Even Asin looks drawn out and sickly, with too much eye make up. Half the events move too fast for the viewer to keep pace with, but do not manage to retain her attention.

The good thing about the film was the two side kicks, Aditya and Ranvir, and medusa will watch this film again to gaze at Aditya’s hair and wish it were hers.

films medusa watched today

2009-10-10T02:29:00.003+05:30

Maggot Infestation

2009-10-07T00:06:00.002+05:30

there are hundreds of creepy crawly maggots around the toilets and the laundry room in medusa's hostel. the maggots were first spotted on friday, and so far, everyday their number has been increasing. medusa has been thinking of changing her name to maggot-killer extraodinaire.
leaving apart the nausea that accompanies reptilic things, these maggots pose a serious health problem, as an extensive google search showed that they can cause infection to humans.
the response from the admninistration and the students have been as follows:

1) we will ask the electricians to put brighter lights in the toilets. (yet to happen).
2) you have lived with it for so long, what's a few more days?
3) they are coming from sundari (the hostel dog). truly, irrespective of sundari's girth, if she had to produce the number of maggots that medusa kills, she's would have rotted and disintegrated by now.
4) it's the rains.
5) I will call the plumber.
6) some students suggested an external exterminator. till then, let us wait.

for once, medusa is glad she will be leaving this place soon.

wishes

2009-09-30T00:14:00.002+05:30

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

2009-09-19T20:31:00.002+05:30

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!

2009-09-18T07:57:00.003+05:30

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

2009-09-12T22:56:00.002+05:30

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

2009-09-11T08:25:00.003+05:30

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

2009-09-10T08:44:00.003+05:30

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

2009-09-08T01:26:00.001+05:30

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.

chicklitorama-extravganza-bonanza

2009-08-23T11:57:00.007+05:30

what our responsible lecturer/researcher has been up to lately.

new life

2009-08-22T00:05:00.003+05:30

its been a month since medusa stopped being a full-time student and made the transition into part-time student/ full-time teacher hood.

ewwww!!!! the very thought of it makes her want to throw up.

thankfully in the last two weeks, she has gone to college exactly four days, long live highly paid and poorly managed government service. but the very very long distance that she has to travel (three and a half hours each way) make up for the ridiculously great amount she is being paid.

but is it worth it? does she really want to give up the pretenses of intellectualism, spend hours chatting with like minded and equally jobless individuals, and actually become responsible for the production of knowledge in innocent minds?

the more she thinks about this, the more scary it seems.

more on the trials of medusa in this far away land, tomorrow.

2009-05-10T22:53:00.002+05:30

the hostel that was

the hostel that is

bribes

2009-03-02T23:05:00.003+05:30

these may not look like much, but these are indeed the most comfrtable pairs of shoes that medusa has ever worn, or owned.

when younger, medusa heard/ read stories about children being bribed with promises and gifts so that they fare better at school etc. thank goodness medusa's parents never tried such tactics, not that it would have mattered, or that anything could have shaken the procastinator inside her.

however, at this ripe old age of 27, medusa seems to have arrived at her childhood and prenthood.

she bought herself these somewhat expensive shoes with the express intention of bribing herself to take care of her feet and otherwise ageing skin and body.

needless to say, she failed.

salad days

2009-02-23T21:45:00.002+05:30

when one puts on ten kilos in a year, and has to to lose atleast twenty, one eats salad.

in this pic:

purple cabbage, lettuce, parsley, chilli, tomato and carrot.

missing: the usual cucumber and onions.

yes, this is what medusa tries to eat, every day, as one fourth of her lunch/ dinner, while constantly craving this:

I'm Marianne Dashwood

2009-02-03T12:34:00.002+05:30

and i am also supposed to have a wondeful singing voice.

medusa took the quize called "Which Austen Heroine are you?", and you know which one she is. this is what being marianne dashwood means: You are impulsive, romantic, impatient, and perhaps a bit too brutally honest. You enjoy romantic poetry and novels, and play the pianoforte beautifully. To boot, your singing voice is captivating. You feel deeply, and love passionately.

medusa could almost puke!

anyway, if you still want to take the quiz, here is where to go:

Take the Quiz here!

2009-01-27T21:49:00.005+05:30

I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me and I walk alone.....

"Boulevard of broken dreams" by Green Day is most definitley not one of medusa's favourite songs, it is not even a song that she likes. but today evening when medusa was walking on the terrace, covering less and less space in each round, somehow the song crept on her mind, aided by slow moving old old numbers on fever 104fm.

she was thinking of hyderabad and missing it immensely, not only for the people and for the lack of her own room, but also for the wide and long uninhabited stretches on walkable ways, covered on all sides with green green trees and shrubs and what not.

having grown up in the middle of a city, with only potted plants (frequently dying due to lack of water due to inattention), medusa almost lost her head in the university and in the adjoining one. trees trees everywhere, grass and leaves too.

trees that you can climb, and touch and what not.

having lived and walked through them for five years now, medusa does feel very very suffocated in the tiny flat at home, with only a roof top to go to for some respite. back at campus, when the going gets too tough or too boring, medusa canlways sneak away and if not generally chill out by herself.

come to think of it, these walks are the only times medusa does not feel the need for company, very very surprising given medusa's absolute dislike of being alone.

so, can medusa show these walks as a valid reason to postpone real life and to continue living on campus?

2008-12-25T19:04:00.001+05:30

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.

you need to vacate!

2008-12-21T12:47:00.003+05:30

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."

non-new year resolutions

2008-11-19T19:40:00.005+05:30

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?

down and out

2008-09-08T09:27:00.002+05:30

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.

where has all the money gone?

2008-07-23T22:58:00.003+05:30

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.

month of murakami madness

2008-05-21T21:50:00.006+05:30

2008-02-24T22:58:00.001+05:30

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.

japanese weekend

2008-02-19T22:07:00.005+05:30

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.

I was tagged by UG

2007-09-02T11:29:00.000+05:30

3 things you should know about the no. 3
I hate the number three, because it somehow in my memory is associated with cunning and malice.
I was taught to not give 3 of anything to anyone, because that makes people enemies.
I have never bought anything in sets of 3, apart from undies.

3 things that scare me:
loneliness
being unwanted in a group of people
being proved dumb.

3 people who make me laugh:
Calvin
Fred
George

3 things I love:
chick lit
Monsoon
track pants

3 things I hate:
being hungry
the smell of a freshly mowed lawn
indifference

3 things I don't understand:
why it always costs more when the auto moves at a slow pace
how my laptop always accumulates dust when no one else's does
how no matter how much i starve myself, i am always broke.

3 things on my desk:
books
pens
laptop

3 things I'm doing right now:
blogging
chumming
feeling hungry

3 things I want to do before I die:
write and publish a best selling chick lit
lose weight
know when to say no

3 things I can do
bitch
talk
eat

3 things you should never listen to:
death metal with a hangover
me when i am upset
me when i am lying

3 things I'd like to learn:
cooking
being dainty
being hip

3 fav. foods:
chicken tandoori
french fries
mashed potatoes with lots and lots of butter

3 beverages I drink regularly:
fizzy drinks
soda with lemon and salt
water

3 Books I read as a kid:
Dui Yaarer Joto kando
mandrake and phantom in indrajal comics
shibram rachanaboli

three people i tag
dave
serendip
jerry

2007-05-19T01:11:00.000+05:30

medusa has quit smoking. five weeks down, sixth to go.

crack his problem

2007-04-16T12:19:00.000+05:30

yeah, right, as if we have nothing better to do than sit around on our respective beds and try and find solutions to some self important prick's problem.
but since we seem to be destined to do so, lets just do.

its the curse

2007-01-21T19:13:00.000+05:30

medusa used to think to call menstruation the "curse" is a derogatory patriarchal coinage. she still think so, but she also thinks that the truth value of that coinage is too potent to be ignored. why else will someone be subjected to a week's angst because it is late, and live in perpetual horror of the bad things that might be happening inside her.
and then when the blessed (surely you mean cursed?) moment comes, it brings with it headaches and back aches, stomach aches that do not go away with pain killers, acute depression (wait a min, chums are supposed to cure you of your pre menstrual stress, so what depresseion now?), nausea and what not. reducing a perfectly functioning human being to a mess (literally and figuratively...eeeew, dont be gross) the curse stays on for a week, and goes away only when you are bordering on anaemia.
if you still want to know the reason behind this post dear reader, take another guess.

third eye blind: god of wine

2007-01-09T19:03:00.001+05:30

Every thought that I repent
Theres another chip you havent spent
And youre cashing them all in
Where do we begin to get clean again
Can we get clean again
I walk home alone with you
And the mood youre born into
Sometimes you let me in
And I take it on the chin
I cant get clean again
I want to know can we get clean again
The God of wine comes crashing through
The head lights of a car that took you farther
Than you thought youd ever want to go
We cant get back again
We cant get back again
She takes a drink and then she waits
The alcohol it permeates
And soon the cells give way, and cancels out the day
I cant keep it all together
I know I know I know... I cant keep it all together
And the sirens song that is your madness
Holds a truth I cant erase
All alone on your face
Every glamorous sunrise
Throws the planets out of line
A star sign out of whack, a fraudulent zodiac
And the God of wine is crouched down in my room
You let me down, I said it, now Im going down
And youre not even around
And I said no no no...
I cant keep it all together
I know I know I know...
I cant keep it all together
And theres a memory of a window
Looking through I see you
Searching for something I could never give you
And theres someone who understands
You more than I do
A sadness I cant erase
All alone on your face

sini ne sini ne

2007-01-06T19:22:00.000+05:30

what would it be like to be an ice queen? not caring and showing it? not having to pretend that one cares, and therefore not having to carry out the the added responsibilites that come with pretending to care.
sigh, that is perhaps the least of medusa's worries. her problem is caring too much, and then showing it, and then letting go of all semblances of sanity when the objects of her affection stop caring.
so, maybe the new new year's resolution will be caring less. but is that what medusa truly wants? or should she just learn to say "amor fati" and not feel bad abt her fate?

hiding my face in shame!!!!

2007-01-01T22:09:00.001+05:30

this is really embarrassing, but as medusa wanted to post her new year's resolutions , she suddenly thought of going through last year's. and wonder of all wonders, they have not changed!!! nothing that was to be achieved has been achieved, only new things have been added on.
sigh, a double sigh.

so all medusa effectively had to do, however, was copy paste last year's, and add a few more.

here goes:

1.Lose weight. (Something i have always resolved to do as long as i have known what is it like to be able to resolve something, so in this case we are not taking this resolution very seriously.)
2. Make one pack of (10) cigarettes last for two days.
3. To not spend more than 500/- a week.
4. To study for two hours everyday. (Well, its a beginning). modified form in 20007: finish the thesis!!!!!!
5. To crack the NET in 2006.
6. Make concrete plans for Ph. D.
6A. Therefore write the GRE.
6. b. so get the passport done.
7. Stop taking money from home or H. i.e. earn money

2006-12-23T16:56:00.000+05:30

without you, i'm nothing

what rot!!!!!!

2006-12-11T19:02:00.000+05:30

this post is about what Medusa is (not attributing some incorruptible core to Medusa or anything, but the way she generally behaves and etc) and what Medusa is perceived to be (once again, not assuming the author has a monopoly on representing public opinion on Medusa, but can hopefully claim to give a reasonably unbiased report). so in the public imagination, Medusa is this mature, independent, headstrong (are mature and headstrong antithetical? but never mind!) opinionated, quite sure of herself and full of herself too, person. even though the list of articles have a negative ring to them, in most of the public imagination, it is not necessarily so.
and what is the real Medusa? a doormat!!!!!!! (how anticlimactic, the readers exclaim!!!!) but it is true dear reader, not that truth in itself carries some great virtue, or there is something called a "truth in itself", but nevertheless, the mighty superhero is a doormat. and she likes to believe this doormat status is concealed under layers of huffing and puffing in self importance, but the fact remains (why so many stresses on facts and truths in this post?) everyone who has spent half and hour or more with Medusa, and has asked her for something or the other, knows of her inability to say no. therefore Medusa is regularly asked to travel to far away places to do some work for someone else, or to accompany someone to the diagnostic centre for some stupid test, which Medusa did get done by herself when she had to do, or go with someone for a film when she would much rather be sitting down and reading Benjamin.
and this inability to politely refuse something that will cause Medusa a lot of emotional and physical discomfort, leads Medusa to more discomfort, this time of the spiritual kind, in which her attempts at introspection always ends in self loathing.
but before this gets to that point, Medusa shall stop.

(dear reader, this post is clearly a call for you to write sweet comments and make Medusa feel better, so indulge her)

fucking copulating insects

2006-11-29T11:45:00.000+05:30

is the meaning of fucking the same as copulating?
or does it depend on the tone in which the title of this post needs to be read? the first word, that is , fucking in this case, is a swear word, which is used to describe the fucked up ness, or in bridget jones terms, the "fuckwittage" of the rest of the phrase, i.e. "copulating insects". that explanation over, this post is about the black insects that lie sit on the wall under the tubelight outside medusa's door, and the ones that enter her room in the dead of the night and scare the shit out of her.
after something like two and a half Weeks, medusa realized that both the insects are one and the same, and then for another half week she had to wonder why the inside insects are double the size of the outside ones. the answer, when arrived at, proved to be simple. the inside insects are actually two of the outside ones, joined together at the place where their asses should be, and flying away to glory, possibly copulating.
but the question the remains unanswered, why do they have to fuck inside medusa's room when they can do it outside as well?

five things about medusa

2006-11-10T22:15:00.000+05:30

no one, and medusa means absolutely no one has ever tagged medusa for anything, and so it must be obvious to even the casual observer that she is at her wits' ends, not that it is too difficult a situation to achieve, now that medusa has PMS and terrible bodyache and is feverish and is madly depressed.
but that said and done, since dave has been the most regular reader that medusa has ever had,, how can she not do what he wants her to?
one however has to careful, otherwise five things about medusa might become a chronicle of her various ailments.
first, the thing that has to be compulsorily posted:

PLEASE LEAVE THE FOLLOWING IN ALL POSTS
'Remember that it isn't always the sensational stuff that writers are looking for, it can just as easily be something that you take for granted like having raised twins or knowing how to grow beetroot. Mind you, if you know how to fly a helicopter or have worked as a film extra, do feel free to let the rest of us know about it.'

1. medusa measures time by the gap between two cigs, two mints, two trips to the loo, two sms and two gulps of water. by carefully spacing them out, she can spend fifteen minutes successfully without getting bored but not doing anything.

2. medusa has been in love with the same man for three and a little bit more than half years now, having fallen in and out of love with seven other people in the meantime. boy friend wants to get married someday, medusa however cringes at the thought. the cringing might not solely be the result of reading on family and its oppressiveness for the purpose of getting a thesis out of it. medusa just cant think of the time when this forever long distance relationship will actually take place in the same city, and the thwo of them will find time and place to be together.

3. medusa does not know how to cook. neither do her father, mother or sister (the four who constitute a modern day nuclear family). so without the presence of their housekeeper, who has been there for the last thirty years, medusa and her family would have gone hungry.

4. in class four, medusa started reading a book called "dui yaar er joto kando", a bengali translation of a russian novel whose english version would be something like "the adventures of two friends". the book was borrowed from a classmate, and she dint allow medusa to read beyond the fourth chapter. for two years after that, medusa searched for that book in all kinds of places. and finally found it at the end of Std. V. so as the two friends graduated from the 5th to the 6th Std, medusa did as well, and it has been her favourite book ever since.

5.medusa's orkut fortune of the day was: You will be advanced socially, without any special effort.

cant think of anyone to tag, simply because medusa no longer knows who all read this blog regularly anymore.

let me not think of today untill tomorrow

2006-11-07T23:15:00.000+05:30

Medusa used to think she has a disposition irreconcilable to unhappiness, she used to believe she is ontologically happy. and if everything else fails, retail therapy will always work.
but then, this naive superhero had not foreseen a day when there will not be any money to spend and PMS will raise its monstrous head, and despite her feminist objections against the discursive formation known as PMS, she will have nowhere to go.
this evening, therefore, Medusa sat down and rethought her ontological dispensation amid some free flowing tears. she was so depressed about being depressed, about nothing in her life, and in the lives of those around and connected to her, being right, or even left, that she just could not stop crying. and she hated herself for being depressed, for giving in to PMS.
bu then, something happened. there was new friend, with all the affection of the world who held medusa while she sobbed, and got her out of the gloom.
how anticlimactic no?
and in consequnce medusa hated herself even more for having to resort to outside help to sort out her messy head. adn a result, it is still messy.

we got this afternoon/ you got this groovy tune

2006-11-06T01:49:00.000+05:30

as usual, dont knwo why medusa decided to name the post the way she did.
it has been a fucked up week. (kindly to be excusing medusa's language, she seems to be still under the fucking influence of "the departed")
one friend passed away, another was hospitalised. one's grandmum died, while medusa's is about to.
perfect time to end this post.

commitment

2006-10-02T00:03:00.000+05:30

medusa needs to sort out her commitment issues. not just random commitments to people or to causes, since people have always told her that her level commitment to anything that has to do with other people is unusually and unhealthily high,but she seems to have a problem whenever she needs to commit to something that has to do with herself.

for example, her health, and her career and her studies. since at the end of the day the only person remarkably affected by these things is herself, she assumes that she can take it easy and not care enough.

take the case of something like this blog. this belongs to medusa right.....and she seemed to care about it enough to write about stuff that matter and dont matter to her. but of late, it has been noticed that medusa turns to her blog only when she is unwell, or upset.

but that is not fair to the blog, is it........

homeward bound

2006-09-26T12:20:00.000+05:30

i am

matilda

2006-09-14T13:25:00.000+05:30

as usual, the heading has nothing to do with the post to come, just that medusa has been listening to belafonte for the past hour and a half.
and shahzad roy, and pussycat dolls and robbie williams.
this post, instead could have been about medusa's friend hero, whose status message on gmail chat is "i hate this world". now hero is not hero because he is heroic, or vain or magananimous or any such thing, maybe he is just a bit tragic, but that does not make him the hero that he is. he is the hero and a hero just because (could have written 'why becuase', the favourite pharse of some asshole or another who have been frequenting the campus) he is nice. and so nice. and he is lonely. but the funny part of this all is that it is his loneliness that makes him do things when they promise some kind of companionship in return, and even when the promises of companionship are retracted and nullified, he continues to function along the same mode.
sigh.
or maybe, he is not like this anymore. after all medusa hasn't spoken to him for a year or so atleast.
but isnt loneliness an incurable disease?

getting a hold on life

2006-09-07T23:15:00.000+05:30

right.
Medusa does not think a blog is necessarily a public journal of your daily life, and therefore may or may not require anonymity, but what she does think however is this: every once in a while a space that is devoted to Medusa's ramblings can take the shape of her journal, in which she may. at times write down stuff that she has been doing or intends to do.
enough of a long sentence now.
so, let us have updates first?
Medusa has some kind of hormonal imbalance, high on testosterone, and since she has botched up her medications, she was quite unwell for the last couple of days.
but again, there had been a lot of tension in the campus, and Medusa seems to be unable to find any way out of it.
thankfully the tension seems to have dissipated somewhat, and Medusa has no excuse not to go back to her daily mundane life, or maybe establish a daily mundane life in which she will get some work done.
having said this, Medusa goes back to try and clean up the room and the cupboard, after which she will make a daily routine and force herself to stick by it.

by the way, there was a snake in Medusa's room last week, a two feet long brown snake sitting behind the laptop, by the time Medusa found the snake catcher, it had however disappeared. for those who dare to ask, why could not, MEDUSA CATCH THE SNAKE HERSELF, Medusa has reasons to not reveal her identity to every random snake that gets inside her room without prior notice.

goldfish

2006-08-28T14:40:00.000+05:30

medusa is a goldfish.
not just because she is fat and round, but because her attention span spans avout three seconds.
not very promising eh?
except when she is reading chick litt that, her concentration knows no bounds.
as a result of a freak boox exhibition and some unexpected money, the books that medusa has been reading for the last week or so are as follows....
the nanny diaries
the sisterhood of the travelling pants
coffe and kung fu
asking for trouble
baggage
the earth, my butt and other big round things.

needless to say, medusa has not gotten any work done for weeks now.
hmm, mabe the next post will be slightly more hopeful.
which reminds medusa, she is trying out email posting,let her see whether that works.

finally!!!!!!!!

2006-08-18T12:05:00.000+05:30

medusa managed to reach the "create new post" page of her blog after twenty or such days of coninuous struggle. a round of applause for the tireless warrior that medusa is.
and this is what she found on the first page of a notebook.
hey, i am much better now. you must have also been through these accidental/ sudden + great spurts of energy (this definitely is not my handwriting, maybe, i am not all right after all) during long illnesses. when the illness does not even appear to be a long forgotten shadow of a memory.
but there is a dull throbbing ache on the left hand.
love love me do
do not wallow in self pity
why would anyone sit and watch the dreamers on a day, rather night like this?
a thought just struck me. obviously it struck ME. who else would it strike for crying out loud?
but anyway, no more digressions (but only one- that this pen seems to have dramatically improved with a change in ink)
hey hey my my rock and roll can never die
there's more to the picture than meets the eye.

go understand!!!!!!!!!!!

no blogspot in india, china and pakistan

2006-07-22T01:41:00.000+05:30

strange set of countries to have arrived at the same decision regarding the accessibilty of information and anti-terrorist action and the freedom of expression. a secular democratic republic, an islamic country under the rule of a former army official and a communist state that is yet to wither away.
reflection upon the intricate natures of policy makers and the minute workings of power in the civil society of the internet does not reflect favourably on the disparate ideological affiliations that they lay claim to.
enough of hig sounding words. medusa however deems it fit to express her disgust at being denied access tro her and a lot of other people's blogs.
it is a different matter alltogether that she had been busy partying with semi known people and eating home food, and that half the world does not have internet access and that blogs more often than not (not withstanding the present exception of course) are pretentious pieces of shit, the fact remains that no one is forcing anyone to read anything.
therefore, be cool ISP providers of the world, medusa is certain you hold more power than any government directive.

2006-07-18T01:09:00.000+05:30

medusa has reached home safe and sound....has caught a cold and a cough and is suspecting the beginning of a breathing trouble.
among other things, her shady heterosexual love interest has been running a fever, so medusa can not meet him also to spend any quality time.
therefore it has been the sole company of the old idiot box....which has nothing of any importance whatsoever.
anyway bye now
medusa does not want to bore anyone with the stories of her boring life.

jobless!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2006-07-09T15:33:00.000+05:30

medusa has finished all her work
so,there isno internet.
no books to read
no films to watch
medusa is sad and bored

medusastoned

2006-07-02T04:12:00.000+05:30

medusastoned

internet is back after something like four days....and blogger has allowed medusa to log in after heaven only knows how long.
ideally this should be a joyous occassion, but for the argentina loss last evening.
sigh.
medusa has supported argentina for as long as she can remember, but has never watched them lift the world cup though.
and the way things are going, it doesnt seem like such a thing will happen in medusa's life time.
medusa takes a deep breath and lights a cig while contemplating what to write next.
o yes, more sorrow.
medusa spotted a white hair on her head today .
let us all maintain a moment of silence while medusa mourns the passing away of her youth.
but, all is not lost yet. medusa can still write witty and cynical comments about the world she yearns to enter but can not (oops did medusa confess to something?), and must exist forever as a not so mute spectator.
sigh.
obviously, she is talking of the world of the hip and the happening.....
more later

"brilliant tales of love, infidelity, passion and prejudice"

2006-06-18T11:36:00.000+05:30

someday, my dears, this will be the way medusa's blog will be publicised.
everyone will try to take a look at this marvellous creation, but even though internet will be free for all, they will not be able to access medusa's blog, coz the server will be down due to overload.
i have no fucking clue why medusa chose to write the previous two lines.
it might have something to do with medusa's decision from now on to speak about herself in the third person.
after all, she is no less than ceasar is she?
or it might have been the urge to quote the blurb from a collection of stories by maugham, who seems to have taken medusa's fancy yet again.
it might once again, have to do with the fact that medusa woke up at the unearthly hour of eight thirty in the morning and did not know what to do with herslef.
it might, also, have to do with the fact that medusa and serendipiduous came on a telugu tv show, and they talked about same sex love, and were much appreciated.
for all of those who missed it, there will hopefully be more such occassions.
when medusa called up home to tell them about this feat, the mater asked why medusa supports something as unnatural as same sex love?
medusa thought it was prudent to not mention that medusa came across as a lesbian in the show, then all hell would surely have broken loose.
anyway, long live argentina.
the soccer team that is.
and hootie and the blowfish.
and orkut.
and party tonight.

medusastoned

2006-06-08T11:29:00.000+05:30

medusastoned

i want to praise you like i should.
j. k. rowling, this one is for you.
and the maker of memoirs of a geisha, you can happily go to hell.
funny thing is that i have no clue as to how is this post going to look. i dont know whether this whole thing will look like a hyperlink, and everyone will start clicking on it in the hopes of reaching something better.
so lets just post and see what it looks like?
among other things, medusa has completed her weekly illness, and is going out to party!!!!!!!!!!!!!

medusastoned

2006-06-05T01:14:00.000+05:30

medusastoned

i do not know what enmity blogger.com has with me, but it is becoming increasingly more and more difficult me to access my blog. i mean i can read everything that i have ever written, and everything that everyone else has also written, but that is about it.
sigh!!!!!!
and i like my blog. i mean you do not really need to like it, but i do, and i find life without it pretty empty.
anyway, so what does medusa do to fill up those empty spaces and times? she watches films, films that she can not even understand. so today she watched mega star chiranjeevi's film tagore. obviously three years in telugu land has not taught medusa much of the language, so she had to guess her way through the film, helped by the plot summary at the back of the dvd.
anyway, this film is abut how chiranjeevi forms an anti corruption force, called the acf that kills corrupt government officials, and attains a demi god status n brings abotu social change.
but that is just the brief outline of the film, what you need to see is this nearing 60 man who is playing a larger than life role, whom even the gaze of the camera respects so much that he has mega star status screaming out of every pore of his body, he dances n he fights, he gives soulful lectures and makes you his fan.
i am a chiranjeevi fan and am proud to be so.
among other things, this director seemed to be capable of teaching tarantino a few things in the portrayal of graphic and gruesome violence. bones creaking everywhere and blood spurting. very innovative i must say.
obviously, medusa could not watch most of it......due to reasons known to herself and some of her blog readers.....and her film analysis prof.

medusastoned

2006-06-05T01:09:00.000+05:30

calling ghb

2006-05-31T14:25:00.000+05:30

get in touch with me right now
left messages for u all over the place
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh

Reservations for A Better India

2006-05-23T16:25:00.000+05:30

Hyderabad's first Pro-Reservation demonstration on Sunday, May22 at Indira Park. Here are the captures.

A little bit of techno stuff. The file you are downloading is a [.rar] file. Right click the link above and say 'Save link as'. After the file is downloaded you have to extract it and look for a file named 'default.html'. Open that file and you can navigate throught the whole collection.

6 litres of toddy

2006-05-20T13:03:00.000+05:30

what more to say
8 hours on the car
a hot hot village
a sweaty but beautiful wedding
nice food
great company
6 litres of toddy
medusa loves her life

Hate joblessness

2006-05-12T22:00:00.000+05:30

I can not possibly say this without being hypocritical, but at least my joblessness does not harm/harass anyone else. Guess, however, what happened to my friend tootsie and five other women who had taken part in the sprite meet sania mirza contest that was organized by Times Of India, one of the bigger English language dailies in India.
so one fine morning at around 6:30 tootsie wakes up to a call from an unknown number on her cell phone. It was a man who wanted to congratulate her because she has won the contest.
and how did the man know her name and phone number? Because the numbers that the contestants had given to the newspaper for communication purposes, had dutifully been published along with their names.
and then it started.
there were on an average seven calls every ten minutes, from men who just wanted to congratulate, to men who wanted to make friendship and men who wanted to meet up and men who just wanted to fuck (after all, since your number was on the newspaper, you had no business acting coy about your availability). There were innumerable missed calls, and messages that asked her to call them back, to reply, to become good friend, to be my sweetheart and what not....
incidentally all of the calls were from men, who refused to say anything everytime one of our male friends said hello.
we yelled at them and told them not to call up anymore, threatened them with the police and actually took one of the calls to the nearby police station.
this guy had the galls to say, since something like two hundred people must have called you up already, why wont you talk to me yaar?
there are calls still coming in, from people who claim to be friends with india's biggest film director and actors, who have diamonds worth seventy five million, who are captains in the army and who call up because they have the same initials. When you ask them why do you want to spend money, they would say, don't worry I have enough.
tootsie alone has received something like 250 calls in three days, and 500 missed calls and I don't even know how many messages.
and each and every one of them were men.
the times of India however has so far had nothing to do to redress the situation.

e-xhibitionism?

2006-05-07T13:05:00.000+05:30

we have been having a lot of fun with orkut. serendipiduos n UG got to meet GHB, i talked to mizfit and all of us were thrilled to have found close talk. the fool on the hill and solan made guest apppearences....it has been two days /rather two nights filled with much laughter and joy and goofing around.
which reminds me of the serious prejudice i had against blogging and orkuting some time ago. i do not want to make people think that if you read my blog or my orkut profile you necessarily know me. but then i dont one anyone to think that they dont know me either. i mean after all there are many shades to one person right, and those who know me in non-internet life, need not be aware of medusa. and am hoping people who know medusa are happy without the outside me. and then there are the trusted few who have become blog buddies first and then real life friends.
however the way we are capable of going on and on about what is happening in the blog world, makes me often doubt as to what is real and what is not, which is not such a bad thing after all. i mean after being steeped in realist discourses all our lives, it is not a bad thing to take time out and rethink what is this real me that i need to show or to hide.
if in my blog people read what are suppsedly my innermost feelings then why would i be accused if exhibitonism? and even if i am, why is it necessarily a bad thing? after all exhibitionsim n voyeurism are perfectly natural parts of people's lives, and my love from voyeurism is directly attached to my need to gossip.
and gossip, my dears, is a very powerful challenge against patriarchal canons of knowledge.
so there.
have fun.

orkut is a strange strange thing

2006-05-03T01:41:00.000+05:30

i mean it is fine that you have this network through which you can keep in touch with people.
and i of all people should not be complaining about it, since right after logging in i found people i had been looking for years.
but then it is also pretty difficult, especially with the growing awareness of computers and suchlike among people of the parental category.
so while my profile in orkut used to say
sexual preferene: bi
smoking: regularly
drinking: regularly

it now says
sexual preference:
smoking:
drinking:

and all that because i found my cousin on line

don't talk just kiss/ let your tongue fool around

2006-04-30T15:14:00.000+05:30

there are no definite plans for this post. like there ever are, but it is good to pretend that medusa is this organised superbrain who has detailed plans for whole week's post to come and etc.
anyway, city and hostel are both terribly hot. the heat is tangible, if you move your hands around you, there is a warm humid feeling in the air, as if you are made to touch warm blooded reptile. there are pockets of respite on the road, but to reach them you ahve to mount an excursion that is equivalent to a lazy person's journey to the sahara. medusa's favourite past time these days is to feel the different temperature zones in her room and to manuevar herself so that the exposed parts of the body are in contact with the less warm zones.
anyway, too much of something is not always bad.
so medusa decided to turn the heat on by unleashing angelina on the blog world.
apart from such maundane ramblings, medusa is happy to note that she has finally sat down to study and has started writing as well. what rocks medusa's boats right now is the idea of "masquerade" as proposed by Joan Riviere (that smart psychoanalyst who freud and etc will not sleep with because she was so intellectual....) and then later on developed by many other film theorists. Riviere says that supposedly masculine women , in her world that would be intellectual and successful in a porefessional capacity, tend to overdo the tropes of femininity in order to dispel the threats of patriarchy. for her, this is a strategy for survival.
but later on, masquarade has been looked at as something that by being overdone exposes the made nature of discursive formations such as femininity and therefore is a threat to patriarchy.
yay.

gym gym gym gym

2006-04-25T00:13:00.000+05:30

i have been quite ill. had my annual stomach upset and vomiting fits.....the hyd heat is as usual killing!!! so will not indulge in reservation controversies, l>t,hope u dont really mind the wait.
here is something about the only place that seems to make me happy these days.
When the cat's away, the mice will play:
Our paunchy gym owner/instructor was absent yesterday. and we had fun. i used to think that since we do not know telugu (the vernacular in hyd and in AP), the DUDE manages to oppress us, scold us, torment us and never say a kind word to us. it is my hypothesis that he didn't bother to learn niceties in english, realizing that barking oders at unwilling subjects of torture is all that he needs. at times he gives up verbal communication altogether. he smirks, grits his teeth and shows three fingers, implying "i know that you are cheating and have completed only three sets of this extremely gruelling exercise. but you need to do three sets and i am not likely to forget that."
therefore when his highness is away, the thin pretty boys group together in one corner and show off their camera phones to each other. the thinner boys try their hands (or other body parts)at the machines that they have so far been denied access to. the thin pretty girls flutter their eyelashes at the handful of hunks that we have been blessed with, and try to make conversation.
the hunks however put on their usual garb of unconcern and divide their time among heavily breathing in and out: trying to smell their deos as if, and admiring their magnificent muscles.
i try to ignore the mirrors, (very diff since they are everywhere) and pretend that the rolls of fat are actually not there. that i am not that ball of flesh that needs to be toned and done various other unimaginable things to...

of maddening non maladies

2006-04-18T16:17:00.000+05:30

first things first. therefore, clarifications. i did not write the poem in the previous post, as dave rightly pointed out, it is a song by abba. thanks for all the compliments, but i am acutely incapable of composing any poem, sad or otherwise.
hell, i am even almost incapable of feeling sad, so sad that you have to express your pain. i don't even hurt much, apart from at times when hurting is fashionable and makes great companion on lonely evenings.
have been reading politically correct bed time stories, but will not quoye any for fear that they will be attributed to me once again. (not that i would greatly mind).
let us talk about class then (that class which i attend because i have a cruch on the instructor, and suspect that she knows as much). one ma first year girl had to make a presenation on something, and since the course was entitled "identity and represntation", she decided to talk about the seven laws of spirituality, from zen to uri gellar...and said that she belives in them becasue all of them have a strong scientifc basis.
she also said that she is against reseravtion on the basis of caste or gender because even though she comes from a backward caste, she has never afced discirmination, and though reservation might be necessary in a pre-post graduate level, at the pg, it is highly unecessary.
it seems funny that this argument came the day after ambedkar's (the father of the indian const. and thought of as the greatest dalit national leader ever) birthday celebrations at the campus. have been hearing anti-reservation arguments for so long that now they cease to anger me, i just laugh and forget about it.
that is not the way i know, and one has to talk about reservation to the unwilling audience, but what i can not figure out that if i, for whom caste did not exist before i came here, can understand the arguments, they why can't people who have been racially, economically and culutrally deprived?
enough for today.
did this make sense though?

2006-04-13T18:52:00.000+05:30

One of us is crying
One of us is lying
In her lonely bed
Staring at the ceiling
Wishing she was somewhere else instead
One of us is lonely
One of us is only
Waiting for a call
Sorry for herself, feeling stupid feeling small

rain rain come again

2006-04-13T00:27:00.000+05:30

and it rained.
and we were there, with full force to meet it.
we jumped and shouted.
threw mud and water on each other.
rolled on the ground.
soaked up the water.
someone not so wise said, "for the first time it feels so good to be wet"
well, as far as i know, it always does...

open your arms wide. look the sky in the eye. you hardly ever do that anyway.
smell the mud and the rain. smell the cig that will save you.
smell the sky.
it cries.
cry.

a night without cigarettes

2006-04-11T14:10:00.000+05:30

run forest run.
run for your life.
the on campus cig store might close.
it is closed.
i do not have a single cig.
what to do now?
all the night stretches forward, and you start to feel like the patient etherised on the table.
the night, obviously, does not care.
come back to your room.
get out again.
look for people who have at times borrowed cig from you.
can't find any.
wonder why.
o yes, you always do the borrowing.
change of strategy.
beg and borrow.
get non smokers to beg for you.
no one is around.
of course, they like to go out and have their fun.
change of strategy again.
is it worth it to go out in the night and maybe get abducted?
not much chance, but lets find our possibilities inside the campus first.
have you looked into the ashtray and the dustbin?
yes, they are empty.
now it is too late to go out even.
there is some pot.
but no tobacco.
hmmmm
anguish
go to sleep
but i woke up just ten hours ago.
what the hell...
ok, good night.

inspiration:
cig. haunter

You can call me Al

2006-04-09T02:40:00.000+05:30

boy and girl stay fifty feet away from each other, in adjoining hostels where there are absolutely no rules whatsoever about comings and goings....
but middle of the night both phones are engaged (free hutch to hutch calls might have something to do with it) and confused youngster asks a group of potheads , what can two people possibly have to say to each other for so long.
i have the answer....
they tell each other....

If you'll be my bodyguard,
I can be your long lost pal!
I can call you Betty,
And Betty, when you call me,
You can call me Al!
Call me Al ......

look at the number of headings of my posts that start with I

2006-04-02T11:36:00.000+05:30

and then anon asks me whether i feel as if i possess this "self" that i talk about.(ref: comment about the previous post)
obvously not, i do not even claim to know what is this elusive "self"hood or subjectivity that is mapped across the various discourses of power that i am (and this i is not a well defined and /or monolithic or even cognizable i)a part of or have been created by.
but does that mean one lets go of the carefully cultivated liberal humnaist notions of selfhood and individuality? especially since it is so much fun to pretend to do as much and the share a sense of subversion that can happen only from within?
*smirks* at her own supposed wittiness.
last night as usual was wild, with lots of whiskey and gin, good good good food and french cigarettes (the brand that godard smokes)......pretensions of being intellectual i tell you.
what followed was not half as happy as medusa might have wished it to be, but i suppose every once in a while medusa also feels like being sad just for the heck of it, because she has been too happy in her own happiness and seemed to lack the quintissential melancholia that everyone needs to experience every once in a while.

stoned post

2006-03-31T21:51:00.000+05:30

i am so tired, what with the gym and the need to study (after dearest supervisor sent a really angry and sarcastic mail) and the general trauma of day to day life (i just said that, i do not really think that day to day life is a big deal afer all)......i feel like i am indeed already stoned, much before the pot has even arrived to the campus.
therefore i am going to write whatever i feel like and not care about the spelling or the grammar ( not that there is much of it ever) and write a stoned post.
i like drinking, and much more than that i like getting stoned, but i like it because i think that it is a great fun thing to do. and i do not like it at all when people drink because of sadness or any such malady that has been always represented as the only logical state of being in which such intoxicants can be indulged into.
hmm....enough of wise remarks.
in bengali (for the uninitiated, that is my mother tongue) there is a concept called "jnanpapi". "jnan" here is knowledge, while "papi" will stand for sinner.
so what it basically tries to say is that the "knowledge-sinner" is one who is fully aware of the implications of her actions, but does nothing whatsoever to change the state of affairs, no matter how harmful that might be for herself.
i revel in that state if being .
it gives me an immense sense of self possession and i feel responsible for my actions. after all, you always know what you are getting into, and you always have the chance to walk out, walk away, but you don't, coz u r responsible t yourself and etc....

Right said Fred

2006-03-29T23:38:00.000+05:30

Going to the gym everyday, looking at all those men who strut around feeling important and sexy, i am certain Fred had said it right.
this must what all of them are thinking about:

I'm too sexy for my love too sexy for my love
Love's going to leave me

I'm too sexy for my shirt too sexy for my shirt
So sexy it hurts
And I'm too sexy for Milan too sexy for Milan
New York and Japan
And I'm too sexy for your party
Too sexy for your party
No way I'm disco dancing

I'm a model you know what I mean
And I do my little turn on the catwalk
Yeah on the catwalk on the catwalk yeah
I do my little turn on the catwalk

I'm too sexy for my car too sexy for my car
Too sexy by far
And I'm too sexy for my hat
Too sexy for my hat what do you think about that

I'm a model you know what I mean
And I do my little turn on the catwalk
Yeah on the catwalk on the catwalk yeah
I shake my little touche on the catwalk

I'm too sexy for my too sexy for my too sexy for my

'Cos I'm a model you know what I mean
And I do my little turn on the catwalk
Yeah on the catwalk on the catwalk yeah
I shake my little touche on the catwalk

I'm too sexy for my cat too sexy for my cat
Poor pussy poor pussy cat
I'm too sexy for my love too sexy for my love
Love's going to leave me

And I'm too sexy for this song

Interestingly, none of the women, no matter how tall/ short/ fat/ thin they are, seem to carry a chip on their shoulders.

TA chronicles....

2006-03-27T09:58:00.000+05:30

There are times when you feel that there has been an overload of emotions and experiences in your life. at times like this, the strange sequence of events and conincidences leaves you longing for something mundane, something ordinary, without surprises.
and then you turn to your students who impress with their lack of excitability. then you do not revel in the happenings of the last week and a half that has left you emotionally and physically drained...instead you faithfully reproduce what your student wrote and hope for a good laugh.

Kajol is one of the my heart throbbing girl. She has good looking and attractive personality. She has a glowing face with chubby cheeks and with large eyes. She has perfect nose with pleasent smile. She has black long hair but she looks good in plait. Even though she is dark but attarctive. Along with these features she has a good physique which according to norms. A very good dress sense of hers made me enthralled to become a hard core fan of hers.

This one is for UG, since my student shares her sentiments.

I Love my Love and my Love loves me

2006-03-20T22:31:00.000+05:30

My graduation college teacher once told me this was the line her son was supposed say in a school play.
since then this line has been the defining expression that serves to illustrate the way of mind of all happily in love people, least of all me.
now, why this sudden plunge into mush, when this blog had stayed clear of it for so long (provided you do not consider wallowing in self pity to be mush)...and for the answer one has to look into a non-documented conversation between GHB and medusa, in which they agree to follow UG and MIzfit's example and write about LOOOOOOOOOOOOve.
Most probably i would have followed GHB's sexample and written about the most important person in my life, or about the innumerable curshes and heartbreaks that have not taught me a lesson yet. For someone who has been in a serious relationship for more than three years now, i do tend to fall for other people much more than seems to be regular. and go through the usual routine of pining, whining, lusting and getting over it.
but then, on Saturday, i watched this film by a famous Tamil director called Cheran, "Autograph". The film club had organised a Cheran film festival, and my observation of this director's world view is that, he belives, everything that could go wrong shall and should go wrong, and then some more. a total beliver in Murphy's LAw i tell ya.
anyway, so in this film, the hero falls in love with a girl from a traditional family, who is then married off and hero and his family beaten up and deported.
pining away to glory, hero starts smoking, and burns his chest.
concerned father: how could you do this Senthil? How have you started smoking?
Son: {silent, because when you are pining you do not speak}
Concerned Uncle to Father: What are you saying my good man? a man with a broken heart will smoke, dope drink and grow a beard. BE HAPPY THAT YOUR SON HAS ONLY BEEN SMOKING.

interesting observation indeed. especially since in the very next shot the son is shown drinking in a pub and then lying down sloshed in the middle of a market place.

But this brings me to my original topic, that is, "I love my love and my love loves me". and even that is not the case, i have never felt the need to drown my sorrows in alcohol, especially since drinking always seems to be such a happy thing to do. or dope.

so this is an open letter to the film makers of the world. kindly dispense with the usual scenes of drunken sorrow, make the pining heart eat chocolates instead.

Happy holi everyone...

2006-03-16T03:37:00.000+05:30

for those who do not know, holi is supposed to be the festival of colours....And what is the connection of that to the pic above you ask? Ah well. This post is about the the shadow that falls between desire and duty, the ideal and the available, the divine and the human, the prosaic and the exotic.
I have to be like Cecilia, and last night/ morning when I went off to sleep, had a full intention of doing that as well. So when from ten in the morning unknown people started banging on my door and yelling my name in order to put colour on me, I ignored them for half an hour straight...And then had to give in to nature's call.
along came red yellow green and black, administered on me by people who were non recognizable with all the color on their persons....And I said to myself, ah well, what the hell!!!! You know you want to play holi, so just go ahead na......
even then the situation could have been avoided, but with the next rush of humanity came a raw egg that was broken and smeared on my hair and my t shirt....And some more colour on the teeth and inside the mouth....
the stage was set for a long long day of fun, food and dirt...Topped with bhang....(pellets that taste yucky but give you the greatest high of em all) and some pot.
sigh.
the last time this body came in touch with intoxicants was two and a half months ago....
and the wait was worth it.
smile....
and then realize another day of my life is off.....Done with....Finished....The course work, however, remains where it was...No where that is.
that is why Cecilia....Inspiration after all.

Class Struggle

2006-03-08T23:56:00.000+05:30

I have finally figured out what is wrong with my life. I mean I had to sit down yesterday and think hard for two three hours or more, not an easy task given that I intend to make a living as a thinker and am saving all my thinking capacities for later on.
anyway, the basic premise of this thought process was the knowledge that nothing has been going right inmy life since November, ok, lets not be so melodramatic and say that nothing has been going right, just that the course work that had to be finished in January is still left and that I haven't done anything that can even remotely be considered academic in quite some time now.
so what do smart people like me do when they are faced with a problem? They look for its cause. And when they find it, they also find a solution. Or atleast that is what it usually happens.
so I started by thinking what are the things that have changed in my life since November? I still have the most important people in my life: both BOYFRIEND and friends, (even though the last ones seem to be spending more time with an adorable puppy called simba than with me, but then such things happen).
I still smoke, so this is not an withdrawal syndrome, even though I don't think anyone has heard of an withdrawal syndrome that has lasted for four months.
I am still gaining weight, and have resigned myself to the fact that this is an irreversible process.
I have also been religiously falling ill once a month atleast, and in the last case have spent one whole month in bed.
so the only thing that seems to have changed is that I no longer have classes to go to. I don't have to wake up in the mornings anymore, I don't have to hide from adorable professors when I run out of excuses, I don't have to read for class and to top it all I can not bitch about stupid questions that I would have never asked in class because I am so smart.
now all my time is my own. Like the superannuated Charles Lamb, time hangs heavy on me . I can go wherever I want to and do whatever I like, all my time is MINE ALL Mine.
and I hate it.
and I don't do any work.
so....
what is the solution?
suggestions anybody?
among other things.......Have a stomach upset.
sigh.

i feel lonely

2006-03-08T00:25:00.000+05:30

Funny thing this blog is. it was supposed to be this anonymous space where i could write whatever i wanted to, and not be bothered by what is it that i write becuase no one will know who i am, but ofcourse, i had to give that chane up, come to think of it there wasnt much of one anyway, since the blog was jointly created by three people though kept up by just me.
what on earth is this that i am talking about?
i need a class to go to.
i need to feel less lonely.
i need to know that the walls closing down on me are just illusions.
are there any illusions?

it rained a lot

2006-03-06T19:37:00.000+05:30

there arent too many better feelings than the one of getting wet in the rain. everytime it rains it does not only cleanse the dust and the grime that had been accumulated through the rainless day, it also cleanses my soul.
i rush out with the first drop, and get wet. i soak up the rain drops, i look at the world through blurred glasses and smile like a silly fool who "sees the sun going down" and the eyes in whose head dont see much. i feel all the pent up angst of the day and night ebbbing away...take away my anger, my frustration and my sadness......it even takes away my ennui
and the best part about the rain is that you can cry and no one will notice...you see your tears melting those of the sky, melting you and malting that block of sadness that often threatens to choke you.
you are overwhelmed.

more on me (as if this blog ever talked abt anything else)

2006-02-07T00:51:00.000+05:30

thanks for all the wishes you guys. and someone's wish did come true, but i dont really know whose wish came true, what was it that i was wishing for and whether what happened is good or bad.
so basically since my doc tells me tht since i seem to have vasovagal syncope i need to have a positive tilt test, i.e. i need to faint on the tilt table.
wait i already wrote this.
anyway, so even though i went thru the test with a damaged foot (n it did hurt) and suffered one attendant who pricked my hand five times before she cd find the right vein, and one doc who insisted i cant be older than a school kid (blush blush), i did not faint.
so maybe i have the syncope, but the test doesnt show it.
so what does one do? esp since this is the only test of its kind tht conclusive;y proves the syncope.
hmmmm i dunno.
btw, trivia: a tilt test in India costs 1500/-, which is abt 30 US dollars, while on in the US costs 1380 dollars.
rejoice.

hiya

2006-02-05T16:49:00.000+05:30

going for my test tomorrow...which to my great discofort entails fainting in order to be able to diagnose what is it exactly that is wrong...
:-0
and i thought that the problem was that i was fainting.
sigh!!!!!
what else to report?
lethargy has taken over. do not want to do anything, least of all anything academic. even reading blogs seem to be too much of an effort.
but will do that now.
:-0

hello blogger land

2006-01-28T19:53:00.000+05:30

hmmmm
am at home.
am doing nothing important or interesting.
but the nice stick that i have been given is really cool.
what else, will write again later after catching up with the rest of the blog world.

THE WATERMELON WOMAN

2006-01-20T04:25:00.000+05:30

This is a 1996 film by Cheryl Dunaye (who acts as herself in this fictional history) that sweetheart serendipiduous lent me.
The film is structured like a documentary in which a first time film maker Cheryl sets out to trace the life of a "nanny" figure in the 30's hollywood films, a lady whose name in the credit was shown as the watermelon woman. as she finds out more and more about this mystery lady, the audience finds out mroe about cheryl herself and her relationships and also the need that drives her to find out about this woman. we get to knwo about her friendships and relationships, and get to letch at the gorgeousness that she is.
her story somehow runs parallel to that of the watermelon woman, both lesbians involved in an interracial relationship, both attached to films and trying to find their feet in the film industry.
she raises questions about blackness and lesbianism, but they are not contested categories for her, they already are full fledged questions that from now on need to be articulated, and one of these means of articulation is the film that she has been making.
that the documentary mode of narration is another one of these devices which allows you to write your own histroy is what makes the film most special. what is this fine line between fact and fiction that needs to be maintained in order to be able to make a statement about one's identity?
she overlooks it, and gives us an enjoyable film in the process.
wish you were making more such films cheryl.

i am going home

2006-01-19T00:35:00.000+05:30

finally my parents lost all kinds of semblances of sanity, and almost ordered me home.
so i am going home coming monday, and not coming back for a month almost.
and why is it so? coz i apparently have something called "vasovagal syncope" and so need a lifestyle change.
any suggestions any one?
just in order to cheer myself up, lets have a dose of angelina.
i promise to post better stuff from tomorrow onwards, today the leg is aching to much.
i however have one of those box thingies now, which u use to walk when you cant walk. so am quite empowered.
but, walking with it is so slow that i usually carry it while hopping to the loo and carry it back again.
so now you know why my leg hurts so much.

Illness Chronicles Chapter three

2006-01-18T02:56:00.000+05:30

We went to the hospital for tilt test today.
The physician in charge took one look at my foot (after me having paid 1500/-) and said, can't you stand on your feet?
i said no, why do i have a bandage then?
he said, then we cant have the test done.
me and frends were like, what fuck....why did u ask me to come yesterday then? after all you knew yesterday that my foot was sprained and that i was moving around in a wheel chair.
doc: go and get a refund.

i am sure we do not need a post script to say how frustrated and disgusted we were at the state of medical health in hyderabad.
bastards!!!!!!!