Laugh till you are too Pooped to Pop!

Book Review: Krishna Shastri Devulapalli’s How to be a Literation Sensation: A Quick Guide to Exploiting Friends, Family and Facebook for Financial Artistic Gain

The title of Krishna Shastri Devulapalli’s new book, How to be a Literary Sensation: A Quick Guide to Exploiting Friends, Family and Facebook for Financial Artistic Gain is a tad misleading since it is hardly the opiate so desperately sought by the countless wannabe authors out there, seeking a surcease from their writing related woes and finding a way to overtake the likes of Chetan Bhagat and Amish Tripathi, leaving them to choke on the dust. However it is just the thing for those who are pleasantly contemplating murdering their shrinks for having prescribed laughter therapy over stronger prescription drugs. India’s self – proclaimed number 1 non – bestselling humour writer does not so much tickle the funny bone as have kinky sex with it and ought to come with a warning since he is likely to leave you paralyzed with gaiety. 

Unlike the macho types who proudly display bulging biceps and buns of steel to camouflage the cowering lily – livered coward in them who says and does nothing that is not blandly inoffensive and lawyer – vetted, KSC displays king – sized cojones by being as politically incorrect as it is humanly possible to be. He takes on the sacred cows of art, literature, home and hearth in addition to priceless nuggets drawn from everyday life for that strange breed known to civilized society as ‘writers’ to milk it for all the ribaldry and irreverence that can be squeezed out.

The result is a feast guaranteed to induce fits of mirth, an endless stream of chuckles and chortles not to mention giggles by the gallon that will be so infectious that even as the hapless reader is being carted off to a psychiatric facility, the bulky warders are likely to laugh themselves silly as they usher said individual into a padded cell and fasten the restraints. It is that hilarious!

Mrs. Sarvamangalam, the lady who KSD reveals taught him English may sniff a little at the haphazard way in which his various articles have been squeezed together to have some semblance of a How To book that ladles out advice on clearing obstacles to a flourishing literary career with effortless ease and choke on his talk of “rural testicles unfettered by underwear flapping in the wind”, bouncing bosoms, male hardness, personal orifices and the like. If she were the nit-picking sort she would have groused over his excessive reference to FabIndia kurtas, veg bondas, and his gun – toting mother – in - law but she would have still given him points for ingenuity and the sheer lengths he goes to in order to induce bouts of unwholesome hilarity.

It is truly unfortunate that even the best of humourists don’t get their due and are given a bum steer by award committees the world over. Making people laugh is a hard job to say the least and KSD does a fantastic job for which alone he deserves laurels enough to bury him under. His book is not without its flaws but the gales of laughter it relentlessly provokes makes it a must read. Though the reader may not be able to remember the precise something or nothing that was so gosh darn funny, it will surprisingly be possible to take away from between the pages, a portrait of the desperate artiste willing to sell body, soul and mother if it means being drawn into the bosom of the Goddess of Success in order to suckle contentedly on her teats of fame and fortune, till engorged with excess.
This review originally appeared in The New Indian Express.