High on chewing gum...

Literature 101 Test Paper

Question1: An apple is kept on the lectern of an author. Try to be in the shoes of several different authors with diverse styles and try to emulate their writing styles.


Chetan Bhagat:

This is an apple.

Inzamam-ul-Haq:

Allah be praised. This is a appel.

Arundhati Roy:

This is an apple, saving which the gardener must have run behind naughty kids who stole apples just for the fun of it, rather than the need, vacating space in the process for the monkeys to latch on to branch after branch to make their way to the much coveted apple which hung there, indifferent to act against its own downfall and disappearance in the obliviousness of the intestines of our ancestral specie, only half intelligent as us, and consequently, only half hygienic. It does not mind its atoms being mixed with those of stinky unmentionable stuff, a death much more contemptible than a respectful one of natural causes which it might manage to sneak if he manages to escape from the attention of the monkey today and tomorrow of the gardener.

Lauren Weisenberg:
Well, on days like these one really does regret becoming a writer in the first place. Not being paid for the most uninteresting, pseudo unchallenging job which, on top of it all, is not going to be read by anyone.
Sweet.
So dear Mr apple, I bow to your supremacy of possessing the power to propel life, which, agreed, thousands of other species of living beings also do, but you are still, no doubt, peculiar.
I must say however, that had there been any other fruit or vegetable in front of me today to be described, that would have also been equally peculiar.

Sulman Rushdie:

Rising in buoyant curves in implicit shoulders, judging from the ratio they made between the bench to the crest, reflecting light with differential magnitude on its crimson shimmering surface, the apple is kept on the table, in a state of too much superciliousness to react at the honor of being the subject of inspiration of the winner of Booker of Booker's, myself. It’s daring me for a conflict of the titans, as to who will psyche out the other and prove his dominance by not attempting to demonstrate it at all.

M.K. Gandhi:

Eating an apple is directly related to rising lust level in a man. I shall resist it till the last drop of my blood.
Doctors keep requesting me to eat apples as my iron level is on the fall steadily. But I just join my hands and refuse the offer politely explaining to them that only sacrifice can lead to true attainment of ideal life style, lust is a direct enemy of which.
I hope my Kathiawad friends and my son Hari can understand my view point and forgive me for this.

P.G. Wodehouse:

It is amazing how seemingly easy jobs can turn out to be the toughest ones. Today I was told I have to describe an object. I geared myself for the Chateau de Versailles or the Pinnah fish to be presented for which I would happily weave fancy sentences, dedicating personal attention to each and every possible view of the object.
But what an anticlimax to find an apple kept on the table.
What can any one write about an apple?
Even though this line and the previous one are being read back to back by you, they have three  gruelling hours between them, and as you must have guessed by now, I am going to hand it over to Jeeves and take a nap now, finding myself incapable of writing a single sentence about it.

It was only three days later that I accidentally came across what Jeeves had finally written in his neat petite handwriting:
'This is a red apple.'
Jeeves, educated just enough to be a butler, had yet again outwitted me.

P.S.:Did Harbhajan say ‘monkey’ or did he say ‘maa ki?’