Bone Gap - Laura Ruby

Genres it fits into- Magic, Romance, Mystery, Young Adult

Set in the town of Bone Gap, Illinois, this book has been classified into the magic-realism genre. The main concept of this book is perspective. It deals with the concept of face-blindness (one I’ve never heard of) which is interesting as well as intriguing.

Finn O’Sullivan, the protagonist resides in the city of Bone Gap and is thought be a little ‘spacey’ and out of touch with reality. He lives with his older brother Sean. One day, a very bright, beautiful girl named Roza appears at their place and all the people of Bone Gap come to love her in a very short time. However, after a little happy time together, she disappears as mysteriously as she appeared. According to Finn she was kidnapped and he’s the only witness. His reputation for being delusional causes everybody to distrust him and even suspect him of the kidnapping. Can Finn prove his innocence? Does Roza ever return? Will the O’Sullivan boys who have been so used to people leaving them ever be able to find true love? That is what forms the rest of the story.

This book definitely makes for an interesting read. It was nominated for the National Award for Young People’s Literature, so it is a biggie. The author Laura Ruby is known for her unique content (a little bit of online research told me so). This is the first book of hers that I’ve read. According to me, the book is no page-turner, meaning it didn’t keep me at the edge of my seat. It wasn’t even supposed to actually. It was more of a romance than a thriller but I was not once bored as long as I read the book. So this book would make for a really good one-time read. I can assure you that by the end of the book you’ll feel all positive and happy and good inside. This is definitely not one of those tragedies, which would keep you up all night wondering if there was any way you could make the author change his or her mind. On a scale of 1 to 5 I’d give it a 4.

P.S.: God, I’m really bad at reviewing stuff. All I think in my mind is, if you want to read it, read it, if you don’t want to, don’t. I wonder if that makes any sense at all. I’ll be back with more reviews though. :P Stay tuned.

The life of a smartphone-3

  She was with me most of the day. We were so compatible and inseparable, much to her parent’s dismay. I heard her parents shouting at her to put down her phone (me) and come to dinner. Her mother told her father once that it was a mistake getting me home as she had completely stopped interacting with people. “Always with that phone” I heard her mother grumbling to herself most of the time.

The first few days were the best. Then one day, I couldn’t feel her SIM card inside me. I didn’t know why this happened and I wanted to tell her that. Then, a friend came to her and said “I’ve been trying to call you, the call doesn’t connect. It says your phone’s switched off.” With a confused expression she turned to me. “This has never happened before” she said. “Yeah! I don’t know what’s wrong. So glad you noticed.” I was saying. She pressed a few times on my screen to no avail. I was afraid she’d get to that part and finally she did. She opened my behind to check if everything was ok. This will pass soon enough I kept telling myself. Moreover, I shouldn’t be afraid of this pain anymore. I was advised by the used ones. So I put on a brave face and bore it.  I felt her remove the SIM card and put it back again. Everything cleared. I could feel her SIM again. Phew! I thought something was seriously wrong with me. I could see the relief on her face too. “Don’t know what went wrong though” I heard her telling her friend. Things like this should never happen again I thought.

But then, it did. I couldn’t detect her SIM another day, she did the same thing and I went back to normal again. This started happening even more frequently. My behind was opened so frequently that I stopped feeling the pain, which was the only good thing that came out of this. I didn’t know what was wrong. I could see the irritation on her face whenever this happened. No! I didn’t like seeing her like that. She was always smiling whenever she was with me and this was new and I wasn’t liking it. Every day, I prayed I’d work fine. This didn’t happen daily, but once in 2 or maybe 3 days, it happened. And then, she started being rude and careless with me. She still was with me for most of the day, but she was not as loving and caring as she was before. She started throwing me on her bed or the couch which was in sharp contrast to the gentleness she used to shower me with before.

Then one day, she was downloading an application into me, but I was already bloating with so much music, so many pictures and applications. I didn’t think I had space for more and so, I told her that. The next thing that came out of her mouth was so painful, I can’t even describe how much it hurt. “Stupid phone” she cursed aloud.

The life of a smartphone-2

The man reappeared and I could hear what he was talking on the phone. He was talking about me. I heard him say ”I bought a new phone today… Yeah!...  Don’t you know about it? Everyone’s buying it these days… Yeah, it has been rated the top smartphone… I know, everybody in our house already has a smartphone and we got ours recently… Oh, yeah! Chutki can have it!.. I know, she totally deserves it.” Chutki, that caught my attention. Is that who my new owner is? “Yeah, the next time I come there we’ll give it to her… Ok then, I’m tired, Bye!” That was the end of the conversation. I wondered who this Chutki was and what it would be like to be with her, or was it a he? I didn’t know if it was excitement or fear, but I couldn’t wait to see Chutki.

I had to wait for a month and a half to be taken out and used again. The man who bought me had a family living in another country and he wanted to present me to some member in his family, so I had to wait until he went to his home country, I could make out that much. Then finally one day I saw the man packing his bags. The room in which he lived was being cleared and I also saw him handing over the keys to some other man. Maybe this was it. This was the time I would finally meet Chutki. Oh God, I’m such a nervous wreck. I’m simply unable to control whatever emotion I’m feeling right now. Before I could think further, I was picked up and thrusted into darkness. Maybe I was inside a bag, on my way to meet Chutki.

After 12 hours (I was keeping track of the time) I finally saw light. The moment the cover the box which was holding me opened I saw a girl. So Chutki was a girl after all. She had thick framed glasses which magnified her eyes. And her eyes, they were all big with happiness and excitement. She was so happy to see me and I myself couldn’t control my happiness. Girls are really good to their phones the used ones told me. I indeed was lucky!

We had a whole lot of fun that day. Only the two of us, we stayed awake till late in the night. I never stayed up so late. I was asleep most of the time in the past month. She first inserted her SIM and memory cards into my behind. She had a huge collection of songs in her memory card and they really were good. She started installing lots of apps apps. I was slowly filling up. Then she took lots of pictures of me and pictures of her using my camera. “The camera is awesome! I can take so many selfies with this” I heard her say to her parents. I was so glad she liked me. Fun times were ahead and I could feel it in my gut! We looked so cool together! I totally love her! Man, it felt good to be used!

Word magic

After having exhausted all my creativity in a day and a half, I’m left with nothing to write. Do I really have that shallow a creative well? Well, having nothing to write and wanting to write something I decided to write about writing itself.

When I was this serial procrastinator and was too lazy for everything, my mother always said, “Start writing and the words will take you wherever they want to be.” That is what is happening right now. My mind has no control over my fingers as I’m typing this. The words just want to come out. They’ve a mind of their own and they are just holding me by the hand (literally) and taking me to whatever place they want to go. Yeah, maybe that was how masterpieces like Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings were created. The stories just had to be told and there was no stopping them. The words were pretty clever, I must say, to choose such brilliant media to deliver them and were adamant enough to make those media give them such a fine shape and had them finished off so beautifully.

And I didn’t realize I just made a post! Words sure are magic and if you’re waiting for some inspiration or maybe a huge truck to give you a push, don’t! Just start typing and the words will take you to the right place, which is maybe their word paradise. J

Showering experiences

Lazy weekends. The times when you don’t want to do anything. Just sleep all day. Don’t want to leave your bed. Don’t even want to take a shower. The thought of a shower is just so painful. It involves so much of work. Like taking off your clothes, washing and scrubbing your body with a soap until you are pink in the face and then washing that soap off and after that you have to dry your body and put some clothes on again. Man! That’s a lot of work. Nobody wants to work on a weekend. So you don’t bathe one day and the next day you wake up, you find yourself stinking. But you simply don’t want to shower and you don’t. Then the week begins and you have to shower, if not for yourself at least to save others from that stink. So if you’re going to work or school, you shower on Monday. But for people like me (on a vacation since two months and will be for another month and a half) it is really difficult to get myself into the shower. It takes a lot of pushing from the inside. I can’t stay without showering for a week and I can’t go to the shower right now because I’m just so lazy. I simply can’t! After a lot of pushing and coaxing myself, I go in and start the process.

Now, the moment I go into the bathroom and start the shower, I don’t know, there is like this force field of inspiration surrounding me. My brain is teeming with ideas and there’s no stopping them. The words just keep popping into my mind, becoming sentences and going on to become paragraphs. I find myself making up the speech for when I receive the Nobel or the Pulitzer Prize and they’re just so perfect. Things like the title of my future novel and its beginning lines all come so naturally to me. The Facebook post I’d put up if something really strange happened to me, like if I was abducted by aliens or if I came to know of a prophecy which stated that I was the lost hero, meant to save this world and relieve it of all its miseries. I think of a lot of Facebook posts I’d put up if something happened, but those somethings never happen and maybe that is the reason I post so rarely on Facebook. My study plans, how I would study for the coming exam, how I would totally ace it and what kind of suggestions I’d give to my peers and juniors who are so in awe about me and are listening so attentively and taking down notes of whatever I’m saying. It takes me a lot of effort to get out of that shower again. It is this magical place, which shows everything I ever wanted like the ‘Mirror of Erised’. It is unbelievable and it takes me lots of effort and determination to get out of there.

Once I get out of that shower, I’m determined to make my life the way I want it to be! The warm water felt so good on my skin. I feel neat and refreshed and also very drowsy! I’ll do everything I ever wanted to do! I’ll start off immediately after this short nap I’m taking. So, I go back to sleep and the cycle repeats. 

Types of ‘what are you doing?’ people

‘What are you doing?’ is a question most commonly asked in my country and it would do you good to be ready with an impressive answer. Especially in the cases of fresh graduates (like me), this question is asked by every person my age or older than me.  Even before knowing how I’m doing, people want to know what I am doing.  By now, you might’ve figured out that saying “I’m talking to you” or “I’m enjoying my free time” would do nothing but earn disgusting stares from the person asking you that question.

The question is a constant. Everybody asks the same question. What matters is the motive. Each person that asks you what you’re doing differ in why they’re asking you that. For instance, there are the curious people. They usually have a database in their mind of what everybody is doing. By everybody I mean students because those are the ones that matter. Adults are boring! They ask you what you are doing out of sheer curiosity and are satisfied with whatever answer you give. People usually go to the curious ones if they really want to know about a particular person but don’t want to go and ask them directly. And also what you are doing is always a topic to gossip about even though it isn’t that juicy. There’s nothing like a juicy topic and a not-so-juicy topic for gossip. Because of their good rapport with everyone in the neighborhood, they gather information and make it a part of their everyday gossip.

Then, there are the smug people. They usually have a really well settled son or a daughter (‘well-settled’ according to them and all the neighbors around). So most of the conversation is focused on how well their children are doing. So even they don’t bother about what your answer is, because they really don’t care. They just for the sake of manners.

There are also the know-it-alls. Ok, it so happened that their son or daughter chose a particular career, went in a particular path and were successful. Their parents know all about what their child went through and supported them through it all which is really nice. So they really have commendable knowledge of the career path their child chose. But they don’t stop at that. They think they know everything, from how to correctly raise a child to the theory of relativity. They’re sitting there listening, like a predator waiting to pounce on prey and the moment you finish your answer they pounce! They immediately start giving you reasons why you shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing and even go on to give parenting lessons to your parents.

And finally, there are the scared people. Scared, because they are really afraid that you might be better than their child. Now, nobody listens to your answer as closely as they do. That is usually because they have a son or daughter of your age and the answer you give is for comparison purposes. They usually don’t give out any emotion or expression to whatever you’re saying. But inside their mind, they’ve heard every single word and are processing, calculating and comparing the answer with the answer their child has ready. If they think you are better off, they go home, sullen faced and continue urging their kids to do better than you and everybody else who is doing better than them, which they’ve been doing their entire lives. If they think you’re not doing so well, they go home, all happy and cheerful and might even treat their kids for being the best!

A very close observation of people asking me the ‘question’ has provided me with all these details. There might be people who don’t fit into any of these categories and deserve a category all to themselves. J

The life of a smartphone

I used to live on a stand, open for everybody to look at. People used to come play with my screen with their fingers for a few times and leave. I always waited with bated breath for the one person who’d pick me and take me with them. Finally, a person did and he was middle aged man with a stern looking face and a thick moustache. He examined me a few times, played with my screen and told the person beside him that he wanted me. So I was taken to the counter and was wrapped up in my cover. I was not used to closed spaces but I felt strangely comfortable in my cover. It was darkness after that. I couldn’t see a thing and could only feel a few bumps inside my cover, like an earthquake. When I could see again, I was in a small cramped room with a bed and green paint on its walls. He took me out from where I was comfortably snuggled up and opened my behind. He examined me a bit and closed it. Well, it does hurt a bit when your behind is opened but it was a part of life. I personally wasn’t very much used to getting my behind opened but the used phones that came to the store told us how we must get used to getting our behind opened because that’s how frequently it happened. Some of the used ones were really scary. They looked hideous with their cracked screens and sometimes the covers for their behind weren’t there. But not all of them were like that. A few used ones were not bad to look at with only a few scratches on their screen. Scratches were a part of being used by people they said. They always had a smug face while talking to us and they always said being bought and used by a person is the only way a phone could feel complete. The hideous used ones always stressed on the importance of getting picked up by a good person, one who is “phone friendly”. They had really bad stories to tell about their owners and they always wished all of us newbies landed into the hands of good ones. From the moment I was picked up I was really excited. I wondered what kind of a person my owner was. Was he going to treat me well? Would I be happy with him? All these questions were cut short when I saw another phone on the bed. It was smart too, but it had a smaller screen than mine. It looked at me and said, “This one has gotten me recently. I’m new too. A few weeks old, that’s all. Is he bored of me already?” Well, there was no denying I was much better looking than the other one. I was lighter and had a bigger and a better screen. That one lying on the bed was fat and heavy. No wonder he got bored of it so soon. I was way better! But then, he came into the room and picked up the other one to make a call. Wait! Aren’t people supposed to be smitten with new phones? I thought he was so excited that he couldn’t wait to use me. The other one looked at me and mouthed the words “You aren’t for him” as it disappeared outside the door with the man.

Me, trying to cool up!

I’m no oldie but there are a few things many people in this “young generation” do that I don’t understand at all. No matter how much I try, I’m simply unable to do it and be like them. Since most of them are doing it, whatever they are doing is supposed to be cool, I assumed. But no matter how much I try, I’m unable to “cool up”, you know what I mean. And these cool people have really cool friends who are really cool, like they hang out, go to real fun places, are there for each other when they cry, and the best part! The birthdays!!! So yeah, whenever there is a birthday of anybody in their “squad” (FYI [For your information] squad is THE word cool people use for their cool group of friends and they have “squad goals” which aim at being cooler than the coolest basically. Didn’t you know that? Well, I’m better than you!) the rest of the squad ensures that the birthday person is made to feel good. First, they show up at the birthday person’s place with a cake (yum) at 12 AM in the midnight (wow) and of course, the birthday person doesn’t expect it in the least (what a surprise!). So the birthday person cuts the cake and the rest sing the happy birthday song real loud (No, cool people don’t care about neighbours and stuff) and then comes the best part! Smearing the cake on the birthday person’s face! Yaaay!! (“Such a waste!” OMG [Oh, my God!] Did I say something uncool?). Not to forget the millions of pictures that are to be taken with the “cake facial”. And yeah, if there’s any cake left the birthday person smears it on the faces of the rest of the squad as revenge (Were you thinking they’d eat it? That’s not how cool people work!). Then comes the gift opening time. Oh, and the gifts are super amazing, trust me! There’s a collage showing all your pictures, selfies (that’s what cool people do all. the. time.), pictures with your friends and pictures of all the best moments in your life! (Awww! I wish someone’d do that for me. Wait! I don’t have so many pictures. I’m going to change this immediately after I finish writing this!). There’s also a poster, a t-shirt, a coffee mug and other such items which have quotes and pictures of the birthday person’s favourite TV show or band or whatever fandom they belong to (Oh, c’mon! Don’t tell me you don’t watch TV or Youtube!). When it comes to closing the midnight session (the day has only begun ;) ) the squad gathers to take pictures, pictures of all of them together, pictures of an individual from the squad with the birthday person, pictures of the couple in the squad (Oh, they are the cutest!), if the birthday person is a part of the couple, then that’s even more better, because they get extra special treatment (what’s more cute than a couple in love?), pictures with the gifts and pictures basically, lots and lots of them!

Then comes the time to upload all this fun on social media (It’s your birthday and the whole world has to know, right?). Now, here comes the tricky part, writing about how much fun they had. Yeah, I can write but not like the cool people K. So there’s this thing called a “hashtag” and I’m simply unable to get my mind around the question of how to use it. For a long time, I didn’t know what it was (OK, don’t judge me now) and I couldn’t ask anyone (for the fear of being labelled uncool) so the nerd in me looked up to Google (the one thing that has consistently helped me act cool before the “coolies” [OK, cool people is just too long]) which gave me this definition. “A hashtag is a type of label or metadata tag used on social network and microblogging services which makes it easier for users to find messages with a specific theme or content.” (Source: Wikipedia). But that somehow didn’t answer my questions. The definition didn’t match its practical application, the way in which people were using it. My observation and general analysis of the coolies revealed that there were various ways in which a hashtag could be used and I just couldn’t get my mind to stick to one. There were people who used it for every word in the sentence like #I #am #so #happy and then there were people who just used one hashtag for the entire sentence like #Iamsohappy (which makes it really difficult for a dunce like me to figure out what exactly they were saying in cases like #gotitdone, is it go tit done? That doesn’t sound right?) and there were people whose entire posts consisted of hashtags and their post was made up of just words and phrases with hashtags to describe their exerience like #b’day #cake #happy #surprise #squadlove #yum #cakesmear (so clever). As much as I wanted to look cool, I couldn’t figure out these hashtags. I’m still doing my research about the best way to use them and one day, I will succeed in looking cool (hashtag wise).

Later in the day the squad meets up again and all of them hang out together (Doesn’t all this hanging hurt their arms?). Ummm..When do they go out with their families? (Oh no! I’ve said something uncool again, haven’t I?). Of course coolies don’t have time for the family! They go to really cool places like for instance a bowling alley, or a very expensive restaurant or a lounge or a, pub (pubs are the coolest dude!). Time for more pictures and “check-ins”. So they post on Facebook saying they were at “cool place” with 7 others which is essentially what a “check-in” on social media means (for all you dunces out there). All these posts are immediately uploaded on all the social media accounts of all the squad members. The birthday person’s Wall (The Facebook Wall) is flooded with posts from all the squad members. Bonus! Posts from the old squad members like your school squad for example (you gotta have more than one squad if you’re cool, that’s the whole point!) with lovely pictures from your school days and excruciatingly (ok, cool people don’t use such big words) long posts saying how much the birthday person means to them and how much they miss the birthday person with of course, a picture from their school days (Ah! The memories!)

There ends a very happy birthday of a coolie. They finally put a post stating how much they love the squad and stating how much this birthday was better than the last one. This entire process repeats again for their next birthday and the one after that. How can you say one birthday was better than the last when all your birthdays are the same? (Uncool again! I think I should just shut up and keep my thoughts to myself!)

We are innocent

“Global warming, rising temperatures, so many catastrophes. What have we humans done to this planet? We have made our lives miserable for ourselves, there’s no doubt about that.  What about the other poor, intellectually inferior species we haven’t even taken into consideration. They are also having to face the consequences of our actions. Many species of flora and fauna have silently gone extinct and there was nothing anybody could do about it. It’s time we wake up to reality and start making some effort towards saving our planet. Let us work towards preserving our species as well as those that surround us.” These are all the common dialogues or sentences we frequently hear or come across from the “environmental lovers” who care about the planet and its life. Humans are the main target in all these talks or writings and are blamed for all sorts of atrocities towards the planet. We humans show no mercy in criticizing ourselves for all that we have done.

There is certainly no exaggeration in saying that we, humans are the prime reason for the deteriorating environment and life around us. But there’s also no denying the fact that nothing lasts forever. Nothing is permanent and everything created will eventually be destroyed. Humans, animals, plants, trees and the planet earth as a whole has to come to an end sometime or the other. So what if none of this is our fault. Maybe this is how it was meant to be. Maybe we are all part of a larger game plan which involves us behaving the way we do. Maybe we were meant to evolve intellectually, make lives easier for ourselves, injure the planet in that process and die finally, taking down the entire planet with us.

There are many interesting theories suggesting that there is a greater entity controlling us. That our pseudo feelings of self-importance are something to be laughed at. One of them is the SIMS theory. SIMS is a famous video game which involves simulating a virtual world. The player is required to create virtual people called “SIMS”, tend to their desires and needs and establish their lives. The SIMS theory puts forward the possibility of humans being “SIMS”. It essentially states that all of us were actually created by someone and that he/she is just playing a game of SIMS with us. Makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? Because that is what we do with our lives. Whoever is playing must be one messed up person. Even in literature, there are books that suggest the same. For example, in the bestseller “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by the renowned Douglas Adams it was said that the Earth was just a supercomputer created by mice (of all the animals) to perform experiments which would eventually help them (mice) understand the meaning of life. Well, that definitely deflates all our egos.

So if the theories stated above are true, doesn’t that make us humans innocent? We are mere puppets being controlled by “something else”. That “something else” is to be blamed for whatever is happening to us. That “something else” has programmed us in this self-destructive way to maybe satisfy its philosophical needs or maybe just have fun. Doesn’t that make all our efforts redundant? All our “Save the Planet” campaigns and programs are futile because whatever is controlling us has maybe already made up its mind and will do what it has to do despite our efforts. We aren’t that bad after all.

But I also don’t deem it right to stop all our efforts. We are stronger and will put up a fight. As the classic poem by Dylan Thomas goes “Do not go gentle into that good night”, we won’t rest and will keep fighting for whatever we know and have come to love.