Jokes of the matter!

 

"Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards" (Beckett)

Humour is existential. Good humour creates aesthetics of absurdity, the awareness of meaningless. The depth of comic is in this awareness of absurdity. The reason why this line is funny and absurd as also subtle word play that creates hilarious impact. Beckett's creative primed in theatre of absurd where meaning can be understood in depth of meaningless. ‘Should I kill myself, or have cup of coffee?’ is humourous question but an important philosophical one. That truly redefine meaning of life itself. There is a reason why Camus assumed Sisyphus to be happy. Zen master snap a laugh and the meaning becomes apparent.

Good humour is hard to find, and in a restricted crass world humour works within the limitation of system in which it performs (what happened in Saudi is assault, not only on comedy, but on liberty and freedom, it is not funny at all, indeed, a serious incursion on free society). It will rarely glimpse the existential, hence complex expression and thoughts that it initiates, but may bring the momentary absurdity of the situation or the system of control. An exaggeration and the unexpected becomes framework for humour. An evolved sense of humour is an art. It needs exceptionally talented raconteur with sense of timing and pulse of audience to execute. A good joke is necessarily compassion driven hence will not be at the expense of anyone but at the absurdity of the situation. The reason why sense of humour is an evolved attribute, nearer to understanding reality, and the bearer essentially good-natured humans. This eviscerating sincerity is what authoritarians fear. Less talented use vulgar, shock and crude expressions, to challenge the system as joke. This works with audience with limited sensibilities (something that is quite common in standup comedians these days) and may act as vent for oppressed populace and rebellious youngsters.

Indian movies are mostly quite mediocre and generally works in its juvenile limited ways (ofcourse there are exceptions but these are quite rare) to excite the herd. Even within these there are occasions where you find good humour, quite talented artists (and yes there are some songs too that leave lasting impressions). Ofcourse with usual caveat that Indian humour mostly comes with sickening prejudices and regressive ways. Despite these there are funny moments. I rarely watch Indian movies (unless ofcourse it is strongly recommended by evolved narration) but watched these as a kid. Many of these I enjoyed (though as an adult I found many quite stupid -some offensive). There were though some who were genuinely funny like Asrani and Satish Shah -both passed away the other day and the reason I am writing this. They bring back some bright faced memories of laughing neighborhood kids! Satish Shah in particular was exceedingly funny in TV serial YeJoHaiZindagi. He was my initial go-to-guy for funny expressions.

Sense of humour is quite difficult to express and I have abiding respect for people with this talent. I too tried these when I was addressing group (whether taking sessions on different topics or when on nature walk/trek) with some modest success. Worst is when you crack a joke to a group and it doesn’t work. They look at you with narrowing eyes, it is truly a mortifying experience. So you have to do a serious self-analysis to get it right. Choice of words, accent/language that match the region (for instance english is differently accented in bangalore as compared to delhi, also the link words has to be local -joke in complete english doesn't really work most of the times hence if you are in Karnataka use bit of essential kannada with english, in TN use tamil with english, in Kerala malayalam with english and in north use hindi with english so on), timing, delivery, facial expression to keep the attention…all matters. The reason why I read joke books (Asimov has some good collection, even Khushwant Singh) as also closely follow cartoons (drawing cartoon is a diligent difficult work that I am thinking of putting more attention into). The other day I was reading an old joke book on environment issues! (pic herein).