long long time

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

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?

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!

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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:

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

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.

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

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.

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

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: