“Your mind needs to be as strong as an elephant to carry wisdom,” a professor tells his tired students in the title story.

But if the wisdom itself weighs an elephant?Or elephants?

Characters grapple with elephants on the mind in each of the stories — an editor hovers over the restart button in the real world; a bedridden old lady recollects her sister-in-law’s morbid fascination with a Bollywood heroine; a troubled Sanskrit teacher mulls over why all neighbours aren’t friends.

None of these have easy solutions. And therein lies a meanderingjourney for the reader —to pose questions hitherto unasked; encourage thoughts often unwelcome; and raise issues conveniently buried.

KBS Krishna is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and European Languages, Central University of Himachal Pradesh, Dharamshala. He did his M.A., MPhil, and PhD from the EFLU (formerly CIEFL), Hyderabad. His doctoral dissertation was on the depiction of cities in hardboiled detective fiction. He has given invited lectures for undergraduate and post graduate students, and research scholars. He has served as a subject expert and presenter in NME-ICT e-content Development Program (EMMRC, Hyderabad). He is the Chief Editor of the Spring Magazine on English Literature (www.springmagazine.net) and Editor of Bharatiya Prajna Journal (www.indianstudies.net). His poems and short stories have been published in various international journals and are part of anthologies. His current research interests are postmodern studies and detective fiction.