MEN!

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

retail therapy

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

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

more from the industrial wasteland

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

posting from the heart of an industrial wasteland

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

Relief

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

chicklitorama-extravganza-bonanza

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

new life

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.

the hostel that was

the hostel that is

bribes

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

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

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!

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?

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!

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

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

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?

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

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

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.