A Joke.

How do you know whether an elephant has been in your refrigerator?

You check the pastry shelf for mushroom tidbits, stand perfectly still and attempt to move only your jaw muscles, stomp on thirty-two wretched roadside snails, start a virtual fire and burn down the internets, call your imaginary elephant mother and ask her whether uncle Floopert has gone missing, grow the fine mustachios, order a box of peppermint polyps, publish a pseudonymous tract against firemen, paint your ears bright yellow and then mauve, move to Malaysia, forget to wash your Monday-stars, read a signatory's signature signature, write down the exact number of daisies it would take to convince a head of state to scratch him/herself, open a roti stand, ride a sedentary deer with emotional issues, refer euphemistically to yourself as "me," antonym antonym antonym antonym, and, FINALLY, use a banned quack-medical device to detect the velvety hint of a peanut butter footprint on the floor of the fridge.

Where's the Love?

So I'm just about finished with this Suitable Boy tome, with about 150 pages left. (Do not anyone tell me any ending secrets or I will personally see that those blabbers receive as much Evil Eye as is humanly possible.) Grammatically dubious parenthetical thoughts aside, I've been fishing around for another novel-type-thing to take its place when I've done with it. I usually have about five or six different books going at any given time, only one of which specifically falls into the comparatively "light" category of novel.
And so it was that I turned to Arundhati Roy's "the God of Small Things." I thought it sounded interesting, despite some dire warnings of hugely depressing subject matter from other parties. So while I was locked out of my house yesterday afternoon as a result of my own stupidity I sat down to read my borrowed copy, rather fittingly, in the rain.
Very little apart from Lemony Snicket could have prepared my for the startling morbidity of this text. Every character is either dead, a murderer/manslaughterer, a rapist, an abusive husband, a wretched "man-less woman," or some variation on this general theme. The only characters, in fact, who seem to have any love for each other are the miserable dizygotic twins, Rahel and Esthappen. They, needless to say, are the continual victims, thus far, of brutal neglect and a horrendous destruction of innocence.
Why must a novel contain such lurid, over-drawn melancholy? This is merely my first impression as I haven't finished the book, but, simply put, प्यार कहॉ है?
I will grant that the whole thing is written in an intriguingstyle with lots of linguistic liberties given and taken, as well as a capitalization Free For All, and I admire these things. But I contrast Roy's approach to subject matter with that of Vikramji, who imbues his novel with plenty of sadness, but everything else as well! and frankly, I find the latter more aesthetically satisfying...

On Things

Well, I had an eventful Summer, but not so eventful as some previous ones perhaps. However this was all right. I didn't go to Europe. I didn't set anything on fire. I didn't steal the phone repairman's shoes. I didn't cast out any demons. I didn't hide in a port-o-potty.

I did get some writing done. I decided pull a George Armstrong Custer (attempt something I am almost certainly incapable of) and develop some female characters. This has had mixed results, but at least they're results. A woman called Deianeira Hodgson-Heyworth is the obscenely wealthy widow of "noted industrialist John C. Heyworth." She lives in New York (or somewhere very similar) in the 1920s. Apparently most of her friends have gone the way of her husband, so she resolves upon hiring a "lady companion" to share in her personality, which is far too, shall we say, dynamic, for one person. Her companion is named Mercy, which is appropriate. They have many adventures.

Thus far they've had two adventures, but they'll probably be seen to experience more.. but who knows?

Other than that I am taking tomorrow my last ever cursed standardized test: the biggest of them all in fact, the SAT (Sordid Atrocious Taunting). I've been preparing for this God-forgiven piece of rapacious inhumanity for many moons, many Yojanas in fact. Predictably my math skills were on par with that of a two-headed with brucellosis. We'll get through somehow.

If you're looking for an unfathomably good, epic-length novel, try A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth.