Reservations for A Better India

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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....

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

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...

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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!!!!!!!

Illness Chronicles chapter two

We woke up bright and early (at ten o clock in the morning), and managed to go to the loo by ourselves atleast once during the course of the day.
Also, had a bath on the hostel lawn, with two women and lots of water and me sitting on a chair like royalty.
But the greatest piece of entertainment for the day was to come from the neurologist that i went to meet.
the attendant wheeled me into his chamber, and he looked at me in my shorts, saw my hair and my bandage, and said "why didn't you walk in? why did you need this chair?"
my frends: "er...umm....she has hurt her leg....."
Doc...." O....so....go on...."
Medusa: "blah blah "
Doc: Ok, get this "tilt test" done and then come to see me.
Medusa: o. By the way, does this have anything to do with smoking?
Doc: What? You smoke?
Medusa: (v v embarrassed) YA
Doc: How old are you?
Medusa: (please dont scold me, and i know u wd never ask this question to a guy) 24
Doc: That young? How many cigs a day?
Medusa: errrr.......10
Doc: Where did you get this habit from?
Now what can one say to that? so one kept quiet and ran away......

illness chronicles chapter one

hello blogworld...and thanks a ton for all the nice messages...
the accompanying picture, as you must have guessed, is of my left foot. and the rest of the pic has my room, two pics of the boy friend and the back of another friend.
tomorrow i am going to meet another neurologist (since the first two that i met, kinda shooed me off and told me it must be something to do with the heart), and see what happens.
as of now, i hop to the bathroom thrice a day, and i have become so good in jumping on one leg that i regularly beat other people on a race to the loo.
my friends are the greatest in the wolrd, they get me food, keep a watch on me when i go to the loo (which is minimal since i have practically given up drinking water as going to the loo entails hopping a hundred meters on one leg, getting the artificial comode attachment in place then do stuff and then wash it and put it back and hop back...that too bare feet), and then generally keep me entertained thru the day and sleep in my room in the night.
i also am the filthiest being on the planet right now, and so they plan to hose me down in the garden tomorrow.
till then, bye bye....

Fainted thrice and have severe soft tissue damage on the foot

am not kidding, this is exactly my state of being. last night right before dinner i fainted and fell on the floor and cut my hand and sprained my ankle, and then got back on my feet and fainted again and then a third time.
the doc think it could be a cardio vasculra thing, and have to get tests done next week. in the mean time can not put my foot on the floor, and so have to be on bed rest for three weeks.
life is hell.
i am not too traumatised though, coz fainting for me is a pretty importatnt part of life, i keep on doing that, and keep on scaring the shit out of poor unsuspecting individuals.
accha bye for now, see you gusy later, since i am confined to my room, i expect lots of comments and encouragement.

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

--Rudyard Kipling

film analysis

this is what i have been up to over the last twenty four hours....watching and disliking films that have nothing to do with the papers that i have to write and that are due in less than a week's time...
Did not like "Be Cool" at all, even though John Travolta was way too cool getting a deserving yet under-exposed singing sensation her true rights...he was all over the place, dancing with uma thurman and playing clever tricks with the pawn cards..but this ffilm is almost impossible to understand if you have not watched "get shorty:, and since i hadn't, i suppose i should better reserve my comments. the rock was way too cool for words though.
"History of violence" is definitely not a film worth viewing. and i am absolutely serious. not because i can not watch violence on screen, but because this film should have ended half and hour or more before it actually did. according to the dvd cover, this film is about one guy who shoots some bad guys trying to protect his family and job etc, and then is mistaken as someone else by some gangsters. one can only dream of what the film could have become if Viggo Mortensen (looking gross, a huge let down after Lord of the rings) was actually not the guy thses people were claiming he is. but he had to be, because the direcor was hoping for some subtle psychological drama that definitely eluded the likes of me who are as of now fully steeped in film theory. but the sex scenes were great.
"Taking Lives" was definitely the best of the lot, though medusa is proud to say that she is now a competent reader of the filmic narrative. there were some unncessary twists and turns, ones that were not important, and did not serve any purpose. but what the hell. Angelina Jolie was looking good, and that is an understatement.
so now i shall go back to not studying.

this is what i look like right now. the photo is courtesy boomshak while the hair is tootsie's contribution.
among other things, am going to sit down and start studying as soon as i finish looking through everyone's blog.
task for the week:: analyse MIss Congeneality, Legally Blonde, Legally Blonde 2, 9 to 5, and Pretty Woman.
and yes, Happy New Year

Happy new year

My New Year's resolutions are as follows

(Before you ask the question anonymous, this is my blog and i kinda like it and it will have 'my' new year's resolutions no matter how hackneyed they are, you dont like it, go get your own blog!!!!)

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 fro two days.
3. To not spend more than 500/- a week.
4. To study for two hours everyday. (Well, its a beginning)
5. To crack the NET in 2006.
6. Make concrete plans for Ph. D.
6A. Therefore write the GRE.
7. Stop taking money from home or H. i.e. earn money

And Happy New Year's resolutions to you too.
Medusa howvever is ecstatic to announce that she doesn't look like medusa anymore, coz her hair has been shorn off. We are proud of our new look.

If you feel attacked by feminism, it is probably a counter attack.

Take a look at what we found at www.goodquotes.com today.

Here's a look at what caught our fancy (the caption is also a part of the booty)

My mind works like lightening. One brilliant flash and its gone.
Before giving someone a piece of your mind, be sure you have enough to spare.
All generalizations are false.
Age is a high price to pay for maturity.
All I want is less to do, more time to do it and higher pay for not getting it done.
Eat right, exercise, die anyway.
Man made beer. God made pot. You make the choice.
Plagiarism is copying from one source, research is copying from two or more.

With such words of consolation, medusa signs off. There goes another brilliant mind ruined by higher education.

kumbh ke mele mein

okay, here it goes.
kumbh Kay mela is this 12 yearly gathering of people that happens at Allahabad and therefore mucho chaos (as is natural with everything religious) ensues. So often in Hindi films, twins and brothers and sisters and families get separated and go on to live their individual lives, that often turn out to be in opposition with one another.
at the end of the film they reunite and live happily ever after.
among other things:
I ALWAYS FALL ILL WHEN I HAVE TO START WORKING.
after procastinating for 28 days, the moment medusa made up her mind to sit down and study, her wheezings and asthma came back, with severe sleepfulness, which has reduced (or elevated ) medusa to the state of a vegetable which occasionally spreads its roots in search of nutrition, that being done goes back to its vegetable life .
the internet has not done anything to help her recovery.
jgbvurafjdsvuwrtopw eiruiefhknc;lgveugh746574ydjfvbjsavuty786 jfeihgurwdjvjsakllk

MERRY CHRISTMAS

had the funnest christmas ever. the gals in the hostel decided to have a christmas party and invited the boys over. as the designated santa i had to make the surprise gifts*, and all of us ransacked the campus for something that resembled a christmas tree, put one girl on the terrace to cut the branches, planted it, decorated it, brought cake and wine and chips and lit a bonfire and raised toasts and generally freaked out.
but the freakier part came later, at around 1 in the morning when my army- friends M** and G came in the campus at 80kmph, picked up me n tootsie and dashed off into the night.
i was wearing a cut t shirt n jeans, tootsie had slippers on, and apparently we were going to this place called Runwy 9(passes to which gala christmas ball had been given to us on tds on wednesday) which is at the back of beyond, somewhere beyond jungles and fields in a far far away place which was also extremely cold. obviously neither me nor tootsie knew where were we going, or what was this place (i still dont know) and were shivering in the cold. obviously by the time we reached there (2 a.m.) the party was long over, only underdressed women and bulky men could be seen walking towards their cars.
so our two defencemen had another brainwave, and we went to another god forsaken place (trust me i am not taking god's name in vain, this place was definitely in the middle of nowhere) and we could not even turn the lights of the car on, for fear of regimental patrol who might not be pleased to see two jawans*** with two women .....they however took it upon themselves to scare the shit out of me by telling me stories of a woman who had been raped in this same place and killed, and how she still runs screaming for help and etc...
that dark night, that crescent moon, that deserted place and those creepy trees, did nothing to reduce my scaredness. sigh!!!!
thankfully the men were hungry and we left for pickles (fave expensive restaurant where i have never eateb with my own money, with an excellent midnight buffet) after freezing our butts off. it was 3:30 in the morning and every shapes and sizes of the male of the species inhabiting the city of hyderabad were there, and they were basically greeting each other like kumbh ke mele mein bichhren bhai ****
came back at four thirty, (the less said about M's drunk driving the better), after having spent by far the best christmas of my life.


*bookmarks with ribbons attached to them, which people like and disliked on equal measures....but hey, if it weren't for me, u wdnt even have a gift huh?
**M happens to be the sweetheart whose car i filled with puke coupla weeks ago....
***Hindi word for young man or youth, but in this case an officer serving in the Indian Army, or so i think
****serious aplogies to my non indian readers, but this term requires an entire blog posting of its own....and will be taken care of in some time

pubbin' days

wednesday was meant to be great. what with the chance encounter with the perfect vcd/dvd parlour that has all the films that i need to write my paper, and the cool* film viewing with a grumbling boomshak, the stage was all set for a great ladies' night at our favourite joint.
and what a night did it turn out to be?
four of us, and no men and all four of us determined to enjoy at whatever cost.
so we drank (i drank only a beer and a blue lagoon and a gin n lime n four screw drivers) and then we played truth n dare n then we went n started talking to random cute guys**, something that we had never done ever before in our lives.
to top it all, we were the first ones at the dance floor, which resulted in free passes to some random fuckin expensive place, some place that we will never be able to afford.
but what the hell.
and then there was the all time favourite midnight train ride to sec bad, the grumbling autowalahs and a snack at the hostel steps.
long live hyderabad and its ladies' nights.
* the film was "bluffmaster" with hot hot hot hot hot......Abhishek Bacchan, and even though not great by itself, was completely paisa vasool thanks to the impeccable charm and virility of Junior B. and to top it all, he could act!!!!!!
**cute guy vinay, this one is for you, what with giving us the mail id and ph no. that we shall never use, and the cutest smile in a long long time.
p.s. only bad thing about the evening: the cool guy that hot neighbour has been trying to hit on for the past two months, finally hit the dance floor, with a girl friend in tow. bummer.....

muh life

tootsie and fly on the wall (random close frends whose random adventures are a huge part of muh life) are sleeping happily on my bed, while i tiptoe around the room wondering how can two grown human beings fit into such a tiny bed. but then again, they are not as fussy as sleepers as i am i suppose, but on second thought, i am not fussy at all. i can sleep with the light on, with people holding regular conversations all around me, with blaring music and/or loud tv, basically everything. but i can't sleep with someone right next to me, touching skin to skin. don't get me wrong, i can stay awake in such situations, and be fairly active etc, but sleep always eludes me.
among other things, phdcomics (as the accompanying comic will testify) has hit the nal on the head again. i dont want to work, i think there is something like two weeks left before any of the term papers are due, anyway the place is too quiet and too chilly to get any work done. (no one else shares my sentiments though, least of all hot neighbour who is on the verge of finishing her work). but i do have really important work to do, i make lemon tea thrice a day and worry about money. actually that is the only luxury that i can still afford, i dont even have money to buy food, and am obsessing about it so much that all kinds of people are willing to lend me some. but i will not take money from em coz i know i can never pay em back, the speed with which all my moeny gets spent whenever i have any.
so basically am learning how to save (slightly late in the day though coz i dont have any to save).
what else, had great pubbing wedensday. left a trail of puke from the pub to the campus and such similar marks on other people's cars and clothes (dint spend moeny though, it was a free ladies' night), and my frends are ecstatic. they gahtered around me and cheered, saying finally u r drunk.....yipee do.
seriously, from now on my guzzler reputation is going to be a diff one to live up to.

After watching Sin City!

This is about my relationships with scary movies.I might be culturally deprived, but I really can not see the point in making or watching a scary film. As far as I am concerned, I can not, have never, and never intend to watch a scary film ever in my entire life. Okay, the statement seems slightly hyperbolic, and it is. The question one might as well as ask me, is, if you have never watched a scary film, then how you know that you do not want to watch one.
That is because, my dear readers, I have tried to sit through films that have scary sequences, I have sat in the next room while my sister was on an endless horror serial watching trip, and I have felt myself shut my eyes tight and stuff my ears with cotton just to ward off the sound that comes from the next room.
So, I actually am not half as inexperienced as I would like people to believe, but that does not take away from the fact that I am really scared. It is not because I think that the stuff on tv will happen to me one day, or because I empathize with the grief and horror stricken characters on the screen, but because, I think, it is in me that the scary film gets its ideal viewer, the spectator who is absent.
I mean, what exactly is it that you are trying to achieve by making or in this case screening a scary film? To scare people right? So when a person is scared it can safely be assumed that the purpose has been served. And therefore, since I get scared in a movie hall with the first hint of anything remotely scary, or violent, or bloody, or gory, or reptile-y, then am I not the implied consumer? And if I am, and if horror films are too scary for me to ever go and try and watch another one of them, then why produce more horror films?
(And yes Mr. Tarantino, this applies to you too.)

about my work now....

Thought would write something about my project, and expect the small yet regular readers' to comment on it. so don't disappoint me you guys.
My research aims to look at women's work. But this is where it also hits a block. Almost all the feminist analysis of women's work and working women has concentrated on the working class women, their participation in economic production and the possiblities of more equal rights for women and consequently the possiblity of emancipation.
But i do not want to look at the working class women. for entirely selfish reasons (being brought up by a working mother and working father who took their work very seriously, mother being part of a worker's union and always knowing that when i grow up, i can not think about getting married and letting the man take care of my needs, not because that is impossible, but because that is simply not done.) When i looked to feminism for some engagement with the work done by women like my mother and the kind of woman i grew up to be, i had to face a void.
Middle class women, those who do not have to be a part of the workforce by economic necessity, especially in India, have not found any analysis of their situation in mainstream feminist discourse.
Even abroad, the discussions have mostly been restricted to the analysis of housework and etc.
that is where women's fiction, especially romantic fiction comes in. it is my proposal that unlike feminist theory, popular romantic fiction read and written by women, exhibit a different level of engagement with the middle class woman's work. they concentrate on exploring the meaning of work for women who do not have to earn their livings but choose to do so, women who derive pleasure from the work that they do, and women for whom work is a question of choice.
The formation of subjectivity in a patriarchy like India, for middle class women, i believe is determined greatly by their ability to go and work outside of the home, in the public domain.
Examples? MIlls and Boon would be nice. these straight forward romantice stories have seen a lot of change in their shape and conetent of the last 60 years or so. the chaste kiss has been replaced by some heavy duty sexual acitivity, but the women heroines are also no longer subordinate nurses or receptionists. they have carved out a niche for themselves in the public sphere, and by their own right. what are the implications of such an important move? how does the narrative reconcile with the two distinct traces of movement in the fiction, one in which the hero is the be-all-and-end-all of the heroine's life, and the other in which she refuses to compromise about the importance of her work in her life?
Also, what is the necessity of asking questions about middle class wokring women?
and so on and so forth.....

chatting blues.....

This is what happened to my friend tootsie when she tried to chat with someone.

gauraveee: pic/cam?
tootsie: nope
gauravee: bye
tootsie: bye
gauravee: just a sec, asl?
tootsie: i just wanted to talk. i am not interested in stupid conversations.
gauravee: r u sita or what?
tootsie: no i am just an average girl.
gauraveee: so what's your surname?
tootsie: trust me i am not Sita RAmchandra Raghuvanshi
gauravee: date of birth place and time?
tootsie: what the hell!!!
gauravee: I am an engineer in Nigeria and i think you are perfetc fo rme to marry.
tootsie: are you nuts?
guravee: why do you talk like that? average girls don't say hell and nuts.
tootse: What the hell!!!!!!!!
gauraveee: again you are saying hell. Chat with me with a cam tomorrow.
tootsie: no, sorry am busy.
gauravee: you are missing the chance to marry me. i wont marry you now.

my student

This is what my student at the English Proficiency course wrote when he was given a homework of describing the physical appearance of his favourite person


Physical Appearance about my fiance
She is 19 year old. She is pretty good looking. She's weight 50kg and height 5.4 feet.
1) She has wavy burgundy coloured hair with step cut.
2)She has oval face, fair colour with pinkish complexion.
3) Her eyes are round in shape with long eye lashes and shaped eye brows.
4) A bit sharp nose.
5) She has slim personality with sexy attraction.


IS there a law anywhere preventing incompetent teachers from hitting on their students' fiances?

where are you going?

medusa: Auto!!!!
auto driver: where to?
medusa: vidyanagar.
auto driver (from now on ad): come.
medusa: (feeling really surprised, why is this guy speaking to me in English? for the uninitiated, all auto conversations are held in Hindi, because most drivers are not literate and definitely not conversant in English)
ad: (still in English) so what you study?
medusa: er....English....
ad: why? coz it international language?
medusa: (not knowing the answer to the question) er....yes....
ad: what foreign languages you know?
medusa: (now terribly embarrassed) none....
ad: no foreign language? how many langugage you know?
medusa: (more embarrassed) three...hindi, bengali, english.....
ad: bas? very bad
medusa: (desperately fidgeting with the cell phone, not looking at him in order to divert attention from herself)
ad: ok, it is 20/-
medusa: (smiling sheepishly, knowing fully well that she is being fooled) thank you
ad: why not go abroad?
medusa: (to herself.....abroad? abroad? he said the word abroad?)....er.... i dont know...maybe later
ad: go to Us or Switzerland
medusa: ok.......(please dont do this to me, i keep on asking myself this question everyday)
ad: I did German and French from your institute
medusa: (dumbfounded....then why are you driving an auto.....how very mean of me to be thinking that....aaaaaaaaa, this is what will happen to me also...help help help!)
ad: (starts speaking french, or so medusa thinks coz she doesnt know anything anyway)
medusa runs for her life........

lesson learnt.....never learn a foreign language coz u might just be in a position to bully poor research students.
lesson 2: learn a foreign language otherwise everyone will bully you.
lesson 3: where is your academics headed to?

coz it has been to long without them

i dont care what wanabe thinks, it has been so long without her in this blog that it almost hurts....

for ghb

Grasshopperboy can not always save the day...after all he is a grasshopper, and even if sidekick girl kicks him by mistake, he wouldn't be around to save us....
so that is when you feel the need of medusastoned (drumrolls ladies and gentlemen and my friends...).
medusastoned fights super villains by turning them into stones (ya sure as if you did not guess). bt what is interesting is that in her undying quest for justice she uses illegal substances like pot. she comes in the dark of the night under the disguise of a pedlar (your very own tambourine man, if you want that) supplying pot to her arch enemies....and the stuff is so good and so strong...the enemies smoke up and get stoned.
Thus in one gesture she subverts the law that bans marijuana by using it to punish those who are the enemies of superheros like her. she and her trusted sidekick potbelly (one who carries pot in her stomach...duh) roam the streets in search of grasshopperboy, poor insect that got lost in this wide wide world......

this is a new column type thing

This is kind of a regular column type of a thing that i have been thinking about, one that keeps track of the films i watch and the books i read (apart from fulfilling the most imporatant task of showing off), but since i do not know how to achieve a column kinda thing inside this blog, i suppose i just will put them in regular posts.
horse whisperer is very slow, but has picked up pace now that the whisperer has been introduced to the reader, i wish he could have cut down a bit on the description of the landscape though.
Daswani on the other hand, is promising to be a perfect subsitute for the mindless Mbs that i have been craving for a long while now. (Shame on me, i call my subject of research "mindless", especially since it is one of my aims to show, after many others, that they are not so after all)

Antarmahal

Abhishek looked gorgeous, and so did Rupa. Jackie was also nice, but Soha killed the film. One knows that she is being fornicated without any pleasure being derived by her every night, but one almost doesn't feel sad for her. one knows that Abhishek is fetishisd, and one participates in that process mostly because of the way in which Rupa leads us into doing as much....One however keeps on thinking how do the Bengalis get away with this...the scenes where Abhishek is making the breasts of the Durga idol and starts fantasising about his wife (Raima who also looked great) and then Soha, are definitely the most sensuous ones, apart from the shots that had Rupa in close focus...Anywhere else in the country, he would have had a hindu fundamentalist fatwa (there i have appropriated a regularly misused term) against his name ...he is Rituporno by the way, and he should start making greater films now...good he is good at.....this is not meant to be a review though, if you want one, then go here.

This is goin' to be one helluva long post....

The internet is back!!!!!!Hallelujah!!!!!!
What happened is as follows: one fine Saturady morning (fater yours truly had sat through "My Fair LAdy" for the nth time in a row at 7 in the morning), the administration decided to chop off two huge branches in front of the LAdies Hostel, coz it was intefering with the electric cables, good decision one must say.
as a result, no electricity from 11 to 5, and then when it came back, all the world ran for the internet, and it wasn't working, coz the smart asses had cut off the internet cables also.
The power cut however, was not entirely unproductive, i got a hair cut (so now i look like a late 19th c Bengali Bhadralok), as did serendipiduous and hot neighbour.
But the usefulness with which i have been occupying my time is as follows: read shitty and not so shitty books, was really really nice films and also watched "Antarmahal", but it is an enitrely fifferent story all together......

Citation and reiteration

This is a very sad attempt at paraphrasing Judith Butler, but since one is so taken by her, one has to do so....it is an ontological propensity (could one possibly get more UN-Butler like?)...Anyway, what i thought she was trying to say is that, every act, or what you think of as an unique act is a reiteration, a citation, and is consituted of a failure of memory. but it is in those moments of citation that it is possible to cite the past differently (as it anyway always is), to displace the desired effect by something diferent.
I do not quite know whether this made any sesne to anyone but me, (anon will definitely extend his/her helping hand), but reading Butler is so electrifying that i have been raving about it ever since the afternoon, and what else, but have decided to appropriate it to my specific purposes.
Since the possiblity of subversion makes itself present in every conscious reiteration, i can definitely dedicate this blog to such a purpose....:)
So the first repetition is what was heard during the Reading course discussion session....Her Highness the Diva (my supervisor) told course mate....Why do you have to smoke to defy patriarchy? Why can't you do maths better?
What, dear smokers, do you say to that?

Harry Potter ans the Goblet of Fire

Watched it.
Loved it.
Loved Fred and George the most.
Got scared.
Cdn't watch the entire maze sequence.
Agree with UG on all counts about the omissions though.
But, it will also be interesting to find out how they manage to make the next film.

This is meant to be a smiley

The following is what was waiting for me in the message box.....

anonymous said...

a humble submission: please check the meaning AND usage of the words "disclaimer" and "proliferation"...academics?? doesnt look like it..yeah..but someone wise has already told you that before on your own blog.

couple of well known disclaimers you're perhaps not aware of:

disclaimer 1: people with borrowed intellect are an antithesis to blogging...hence they are not allowed.
disclaimer 2: blogs are not "lets pretend to be different" zones

Thought of the day: holding front seats to a basketball game doesnt make you a player.
get it get it get it?? more later..since you love comments so much...
ps: beatrice once said..truth is nastiness; nastiness, truth!

11:00 PM

All i want anon to remember, when s/he cites Beatrice is, it was a nice gesture to equate truth with nastiness, but is there only one kind? when you seek to pin down truth outside of all the discourses through and within and by which truth resides and comes into being, which includes nastiness, you are being a totalitarian, your version of reality and therefore truth, from then onwards, is the only one possible, and no, before you say that, i am not preaching any pseudo-foucauldian relativism. every time you participate in a discourse that claims to be the only one of its kind, and therefore seeks to hide its status as a metanarrative, which however is manufactured, an arefact, you mariginalise the subaltern voices and narratives, which unlike you do not make a claim of being 'always already there'. i can not even begin to look into the nature of nastiness, your truth claims, presuambly for my benefit, are so overwhelming, i have, as you must have noticed, missed the point.
The self refelxivity of your narrative is however commendable, it you still can not get it, read the last line of your message.
truth is also about power, i have the power to stop anonymous comments, but i will not do that. you however have the power of 'nastiness', hope you shall use it carefully. after all, i am not serving you my version of truth, subversion is not something i need to be wary of, truth claims, in this blog, are all yours , and therefore, have fun!!!!

Disclaimers, Clarifications, and what say you....

Disclaimer one:
The Speed excerpt was not an original, it is taken from this fantastic site at rinkworks/movieaminute.com.
Disclaimer two:
The author is respnsible for all the posts on this blog, but not the comments. As the title clearly states, "If you do not like this blog, go get your own."
Disclaimer three:
I like it when people post comments, no matter how nasty they are. So dear Anon aka wanabe, :) thank you.
Disclaimer four:
This blog will never have pics of hot neighbour.
Disclaimer five:
If you have a problem with the proliferation of Angelina Jolie on this blog, as I mentioned earlier, you can jolly well go and get your own.
And about the image on top, it is part of my favourite, phdcomics, who can be visited at www.phdcomics.com/comics.php

I do love Speed

Dennis Hopper
I will blow up the elevator.
Keanu Reeves
Oh no. Not the elevator. (saves elevator)
Dennis Hopper
I will blow up the bus.
Keanu Reeves
Oh no. Not the bus. (saves bus)
Dennis Hopper
I will blow up the subway.
Keanu Reeves
Oh no. Not the subway. (saves subway)

The End

funny story?

This is the story of my infamy that I meant to write a few days ago, but was not feeling at all nice about myself, and as a result was unable to take a crack at myself. But now that everything is nice and fine, "a brand new day", and self respect is totally restored after one hour long tete-a-tete (excuse the absence of the accents), the time is ripe to make a dig at myself, and allow the rest of the humanity to do as much.Not that i am worried it would take them too much to do that.haan, going back, i wake up not so early in the morning and have to go out immediately, and am looking for my lock and key. and they are not there. now on principle i never ever misplace my lock and key. i lose books and pen and money, and temper and cds and friends and assignments and etc, but never never my lock and key.so my superbrain (like chacha chaudhuri, whose brain is faster than a computer) starts working and my suspicion zeros on the friend who stayed over in the night. i go and wake her up (poor baby had finally gone to sleep in her room) but she dint have it. go to next door hot neighbour's room, she doesnt have it either. but she is way more enterprising than i am, and goes and gets a magnet, with the hope that my lock will zoom to her magnet and like a true superhero she will save the day.i am not so trusting, so i go to the third person who had paid me a visit the night before, and wake her up also. she looks very angry (as she should) and said, "i opened ur door last night remember?" medusa yaps..." ya ya, n did u take it?""no, it is hanging behind your door."i have nothing more to say.

this day, could have been such an ordinary day, could have gone in an uneventful way, then you came into my world, and in my world you stayed...okay okay, i shall stop making myself appear more interesting than i am, but it has been such a nice day, who better to express this sense of freedom than dear (not) old angelina, who makes my freedom to do what i please (inside the campus, for a day at a time) worthwhile, because i can while away my days dreaming of her? 

Free at last, free at last, thank god almighty i am free at last

and from the skies, a sinister voice said, "spoken too soon."
and i woke up to find more assignments, more classes, no money, more meetings, no booze and a terrible horrible wrist ache.
and no comments.
:(

madness

we have to run and fight and hide and etc. this is madness. why would one nice individual make one go through such trauma. i dont want to do assignments. to top it all no one seems to be online even, how will i survive through the night? and write critiques of people who are forty years older than me? and to top it all, i am sleepy.
sympathy, hello people, earth calling the martians, anybody in there?

This one is for UG, and this is called "Urban Romance". It doesnt matter whether she has seen this before though. :) 

I know that this is ver artificial, or that everyone thinks that it is, and also that it is engineered to generate a certain kind of, most probably a very heterosexual male response, but isnt this beautiful? 

When i was a kid, and had a huger crush on him, one of my recurret fantasies was to become famous director and meet him and cast him in one of my films etc...but since yesterday, i do not think i want to be a director anymore. i mean the earlier lady who had come to campus to screen her docus was bad enuf, with the insistence on the focus and sharpness. but yesterday's chappy totally took the cake by making us late by 30mins coz he wanted us to increase n decrease the brightness/ contrast/ sharpness exatcly in that order. i mean it went on and on and on. i liked his film, and this is the second time was watching him, and he would have never come to the place if i didnt like his film in the first place. and he is pretty talented, but he was a student not so long ago, so then how can yo be so stuck up and not understand al the problems a student run org can have? but anyway, coming back to my own "oceans of fantasy". days and nights were so full of him that i really really used to wonder how can i possibly be alive without him, and how am i stil alive? that phase has past, but am still surprised that everytime someone mentions him, or i see him on the tv, i start grinning like some foolish fifteen year old. nice feeling.  

this is Shane form the L word, as all of us know....isn't she great, isn't she good, isn't she lovely? 

What would I not give to be the sink or the tap...... 

time and such mundane things

ok, first acknowledgements. i owe the inspiration to dave, but that is where his influence stops, coz like great and not so great writers and composers and etc, i would like to claim originality in whatever else follows.
i mean, if you are in India, and have had a certain amount of exposure to Hindi film songs, then you have to be familiar with the Anu Malik type composers, who are regularly inspired by various artists all over the world, and in effect put inane lyrics to the copied tunes, without ever acknowledging the original.
I am not complaining, but i am not following his example either. Atleast not yet.
Anyway, the point of the matter is this: I want a world, or rather i want to be in such a position (the world and rest of the fellow humanity can go to hell) where no watches will ever be required. I mean i am not claiming that i shall never do any work, all that i am asking for is the liberty of doing it at my own pace.
And you know what? Am actually approximating that position.
How you ask?
Ok, i do not have an alarm clock, rather i have two, but i do not use them, and therefore i never wake up when everyone expects me to wake up. Since i do not wake up ever in time for breakfast or lunch, i can go and have really nice dinner where ever i want to.
apart from the gastronomical freedom, i also do not have to attend classes.
and since i do not attend classes, i do not have to submit assignments.
Nice na?

Glorious Last Night!!!!!! 

hmmmmmmm

Three blue lagoons
A glass of beer
Two Tequillas
A gigantic birthday cake
An omlet off the road
NIce music in the pub for a change
The inability to get high
hmmmmm
Will not change it for anything
:-)

ok, this is groucho marx, which i am kinda sure everyone knows. but i didnt, till yesterday, i mean i didnt know what he looked like, and somehow had been nurturing the idea that i look like him. but now, my dear all, i am glad to say, i dont think so anymore (but no disrespect to groucho or any of the marx brothers) 

This is because there is a faint hope that she might be reading my blog and will consider checking me out owing to the enormous amount of devotion and lust that i shower on her 

i have a link for all of us

medusastoned

i demand that everyone who even passes through my blog, checks this out:
www.phdcomics.com/comics/comics.php

ok, this is the most controversial picture that my comp has ever seen. i say, they are two guys, what say you? 

haan, this is all for quite some time. 

happiness is a long gun

medusastoned
or some such thing...not an original...but in today's context happiness is something like a good meal, lots of old friends and nice weather...we had a kind of a reunion today, with some old people coming back and talking about their lives and all..and those are the times when you ineviatbly start thinking about your own life. this phenomenon has become so common that i try not to indulge in such luxuries, but can't help it. after all a certain amount of bourgeois self-indulgence has been and will be one of the building blocks of my self image.
but philosophising is an entirely different thing all together (like speaking without hyperboles)
what am i doing in this place? i know that on paper being a research scholar is well and fine, and i do earn some pocket money every once in a while, but when it coms down to one day at a time, i basically just sleep and eat and try andreduce the amount of bitching that i am involved in gradually.
that is about it.. there is no path breaking discovery (ok, wrong term to use, pathbreaking is not the right word for humanities people) and i dont even read to be able to find something to say about my theses. i mean, where is this work taking me?
what rot man, did i not agree to not wallow in self pity? therefore shall do something productive right now, which in my dictionary always means manula labour with lots of sweat involved.
so here we go, to arrange the room and clean up the mess accumulated over two weeks of illness.

medusastoned

medusastoned
i hate hidi films in which the hero and the heroin keep on calling each otehr by name.
ria: JAI, lets sit down for some time.
JAi: no RIA, i have to go to work.
Ria: please , JAIcheck out the beauty of the scene.
Jai: but RIA, our boss will be waiting for me.
Ria:JAI if you dont stay with me here i will jump off this ledge.
Jai: RIA please stop. are you mad or what!

NO PRIZES FOR GUESSING WHICH FILM.

anonymity

the title, as usual hopes to have no bearing with what is to be written, just that i have been as usual thinking about the purpose of blog, and for once, i am clear that i did and do intend to write for an intended set of readers, readers that would read, but i would have no ways of getting across to them or they to me apart from the mediation of this enromous network of people who do not have a real identity atleast to me.
ok, this is not where we get into a debate about the real and the virtual and the reality of the real etc. but the very act of writing "we", and not mean the royally cesarian "we" is witness to the fact that i do and intend to have a readership for my blog.
but they have to be people who are not around me, who can not get back to me for what i write or post, and even less, take me seriously. because after all that is the aim of my life, to attain such a state where nothing i say or do can be believed or taken in face value.
but that, must be the subject of another post.
anyway, i already am quite tired with this postmodern self reflexivity, and itch to go back to the question of coming out. but how, because whatever i have to say in this post will be an answer to frida, and i like her blog, and like the name even more. so there you go, you can never avoid the real, atleast the real concerns.
maybe, i should instead concentrate on the other blog and write there.
but more on coming out: it is only hetero, or atleast bi-s who have the liberty of saying that they are not gay today, or not straight today. one has to fight for the same labels that the others so easily discard, because these are the same labels that are not recognised by several societies and states, there are legislatures calling them unnatural, or if you are a lesbian in india, then denying your very existence.
how can you then, let go of the labels, when a lot of us have chosen these same labels to be the most crucial part of their identities.
these are the labels that they could get killed for, and these are the labels that you fight for.

coming out

funny huh? i mean i never thought that there was anything i needed to come out with, and i also thought that everyone who knows me more or less knows about my sexuality also, but today, after a singularly polemical msg in someone else's blog, suddenly blgosite parasite started clapping and said that you just made your first coming out speech.
hmm, ok, i suppose even that is a cause for celebration, and to mourn the passing away of days that were framed by the L word.
anyway, i am pretty intrigued by ugly girl's blog, and to think someone i find attractive and take a sufficient amount of interest in was actually making such a crucial transition and all of us were basically laughing about her nonchalance and etc....
but i do somehow feel funny when people think that they are going away from being a bisexual to defining themselves as a homosexual. please, i know and agree that gay is the identity, rather the only identity you can adopt to fight homophobia, and that there is no political charge or position available to bisexuality, atleast not yet, and that too because the slipping into the hetero norm is so easy for us.... but that doesnt mean that we would betray the cause does it necessarily?