salad days

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

in this pic:

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

missing: the usual cucumber and onions.

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

I'm Marianne Dashwood

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

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

medusa could almost puke!

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

Take the Quiz here!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

this is a section of a cut tree trunk. i have always been fascinated by such things, things that are "natural", "tree-y" etc. remember highway dhabas and adventure stories on tv that would use tree stumps as seats? these beautiful people will always have the most beautiful lives and what not, and nature seemed so, well, natural.....

but now that there are a profusion of tree trunks, and barely any trees, most of my fascination is gone. all i wish for is some less dust, some more trees, some peace and shade.

you need to vacate!

Christmas season has brought unexpected cheer.

since last June Medusa had been living to the tune of "all my bags are packed, I'm ready to go".

the room was to have been renovated in June (having been partially renovated in march and in April), so Medusa packed all her belongings and  put them on top of the cupboard. in June. and she has been living off a suitcase with a single book to show in terms of research ever since. the threat of renovation never went away, and now people all around are moving in and out of their rooms, and getting swanky tiled floors and five plug points as a fringe benefit.

Medusa also pulled up her socks and arranged a spare room to move into for the time being. she packed a suitcase for clothes and hugged her (new)laptop, and informed the supervisor: "bhaiya, my room is empty, you can come and re tile my floor".

the bhaiya said, "But ma dame, you need not get your room renovated. we are going to demolish it instead."

non-new year resolutions

today in the remedial course class ( remedial classes for students at the institute, sorry, at the university, who feel that they are weak in english, I am teaching in that class by the way, not learning, contrary to what the linguistic skill displayed in my blog might suggest)I was trying to explain to the kiddos the meaning of the term new year's resolution.
in the past ten years, i had never come across someone who didn't know what the term meant, or one who hadn't made a resolution. but this kids didn't, and hadn't.
which got me thinking about the kind of people who feel the need to make resolutions, repeatedly, and about myself, who has been making the same resolutions for the past three years or so.
leaving aside chronic losers like Bridget Jones (though at the end of both Bridget Jones' Diary and The Edge of Reason she is anything but a loser, despite all the false starts and idiosyncrasies, she has won in love)and similar chick lit heroins desperately fighting bulges and the discourse of failed romance, who are the people who make resolutions?
there is me for starters,i feel that i am hopelessly unorganised, without any priorities in life, and in constant peril of losing focus. therefore a resolution, made almost monthly, should keep me on track.
the real picture however is very different. i often do not even remember that there are such things as resolutions or that i have made one, if i remember that i have made a resolution, i conveniently forget its contents. but more than anything else, there are so many things going wrong, and i am so disoriented/ lazy/ scared/ arrogant, that a nagging resolution at the back of my mind does nothing to resolve the mess that is my life.
take the resolve to lose weight as a case in point.
i have been fat all my life, and have wanted to lose weight for the equal amount of time. and the only times i manage to lose weight are when i am in the initial days of falling in love, with a fluttering heart and a losing appetite. but chronic falling in love is not a good idea, not for studies and for other assorted relationships that continue even when love disappears.
so, the bottom-line remains that keeping up resolutions are not for the weak hearted, in this case, moi.
but making resolutions should be anyone's cuppa tea, be the super-perfect planner or the OCD or whoever.
this brings me back to the my original question, who are the people who do not make resolutions? are they perfect? or merely content?

down and out

woke up feeling terribly ill. nothing surprising, medusa always feels sick when it is time to wake up. she can only dream of days when there will be nothing to do and nowhere to go and no reason to wake up, save the one why one should anyway wake up, that is, one is no longer asleep.
having spent most of her life this way, medusa is now horrifically pressed for time, and the few hours of sleep are invariably disturbed, coming only in snatches and snatched away by the recurring fear of not being able to get up on time.
this is what growing up means, doesn't it? not being able to not do anything because one doesn't feel up to?
now there are commitments to meet, promises to keep and work to be done.
hate this life.

where has all the money gone?

yesterday at the great indian parliamentary circus, the BJP MPs waved 1 crore rupees, allegedly given to them as bribes by the Congress. the money was taken away and a probe directed.

news channels quickly showed various party spokesmen throwing allegations and counter allegations. " yes, the BJP memebers were right to bring the money to the parliament, where has our democracy come down to if honourable politicans try to poach MPs from other parties?" "It's all a ploy to take attention away from the fact that we were going to win the trust motions!!!!" "How can 1 crore rupess come in such a small bag@##$$%" and so on and so forth.

what struck us was something quite simple. if this money was indeed given as bribe, then those who showed it in the parliament and therefore got it confiscated must have risen above greed. or have enough of their own.

but if this was just a ploy to disrupt the trust vote, and they were bandying their own money about, then one has to seriously wonder about their faculty of foresight, because that money is well and truly gone.

month of murakami madness

nice film. but definitely not worth the hundred rupees i had to fish out at the multiplex.
would have been great had i got the dvd (moserbear, cost 34/-) and watched it at home.
but tis ok, though one wonders what happened to all the beautiful oh so beautiful people that used to flock film screens? the princess was decidedly non princessy.

japanese weekend

this is what medusa has been up to this weekend, having forgotten status as a full time ph d student, has been indulging in a little bit of cultural exploration of the Japanese.
and the result: AWESOME.
"bubble fiction: boom or bust" has the most handsome hero ever, hiroshi obe, i bow to thee.
"always- sunset on 3rd street" is as if lifted from the comic books it is based on, frame by frame.
and murakami, medusa wonders why didn't she discover him earlier. his books are not just delightful, they are also filled with the characters medusa admires the most, precise, efficient, clean people, who have an interestingly bizarre life nevertheless.
therefore, these four are, must reads and must watchs.

I was tagged by UG

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


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


3 people who make me laugh:
Calvin
Fred
George

3 things I love:
chick lit
Monsoon
track pants


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


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

3 things on my desk:
books
pens
laptop

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

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

3 things I can do
bitch
talk
eat

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



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


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

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

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

three people i tag
dave
serendip
jerry

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

crack his problem

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

its the curse

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

third eye blind: god of wine

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

sini ne sini ne

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

hiding my face in shame!!!!

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

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

here goes:

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

without you, i'm nothing


what rot!!!!!!

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

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