Kumar Sartre

From Wittypedia

Initially a somewhat miserable Indian boy then a slightly less miserable man, throughout his life prone to introspection and the wearing of black turtle neck sweaters regardless of the weather. Born in Bombay in the summer of 1902 (exact date not known) the only child of two parents, he excelled at his local grammar school and by the age of nine was fluent in both English and Norwegian besides his native Hindi.

Teased from an early age by children who hated his lazy brilliance and his family's wealth he came to dislike people in general, favouring only a very few with his friendship. A friend he came to rely upon for advice over most of his adult life was Cynthia Henderson, a psychic florist working out of Calcutta.

After travelling from England to India in order to avoid being burned as a witch, Cynthia met Kumar when he was working as a travelling rat strangler and it was during this time he wrote what is considered the most important work of his early black period '13 ways to kill a rat' has since been translated into three languages, by Kumar himself; English, Norwegian and Hindi.

Despite his families money he shunned the trappings of wealth and would only have one scoop of ice cream rather than two when the circus came to town. Between the wars he travelled the world extensively, working by day and writing by night. During what he intended to be a brief trip to England he picked up some personal effects that Cynthia had had to leave behind, these included a silk dress and a bird cage.

Kumar was maturing and so were his writings, he had begun his greatest book but after completing the first few chapters the world was plunged into war by the antics of short moustached German, trapping him in Blighty. Kumar fought alongside the British but in doing so fell deep into depression, he lost contact with Cynthia and found it hard to write with any enthusiasm. It was not until 1947 that he again began to write seriously, he chipped away at his opus for eight years. The day after the manuscript was delivered to the publishers, eighty pages, three hundred chapters long, Kumar left for India determined to track down his lost friends and family. The book, as is well known, was eventually titled 'In a Small Hat', however its working title was 'Dirty Feet' a nickname he'd thought of whilst in the trenches.

Back in India he rediscovered Cynthia, who was happy and well, looking after their son, born unbeknownst to him soon after he had left to travel. He proposed the same day and they were married soon after, she wore the silk dress he returned to her (the cage got a bit damaged in transit and was thrown away) After four blissful years living together, his wife urged him to change his writing style from the heavy and serious to something a little more frivolous, suggesting that it might sell better as they saw the dawn of the sixties. Kumar concurred, at the age of sixty he released his first sex manual, with pictures, selling over a million copies in the first year, setting them both up nicely for retirement in Eastern Australia. Kumar has since dropped off the grid, he is assumed dead but no official record exists to attest to this.

This biographer likes to believe he is still wandering around in his turtle neck sweater kicking sand into the faces of surfer dudes as they dry in the mid morning sun.