Humour brings out the human in us

Humour has an amazing power. It emancipates us from the oppressive, uncontrollable facts of life. It emboldens us, enabling us to accept our condition and move on. The insane man has no sense of humor, but the man in possession of it has a rational, realistic view of the world. He can laugh equally hard when he fails as when he triumphs. Laughter makes us human…
—    Andrew Gonzales

Last year my husband took a very spirited decision. He decided to quit his job with the Tata Group to pursue a Ph.D. degree. Most of his acquaintances, not to mention his family, were astonished by his unusual decision. They were curious to know why at this juncture in life he has decided to do a Ph.D.

He explained it thus: “It is now 21 years since I am married. My wife has suddenly developed the 7-year itch 3 times over. One fine day she came and told me, ‘Look dear, I am bored being married to you for so long; I now want to marry a doctor.’ This was something I never imagined as I had taken her for granted. I did not want to lose her, because I had got used – addicted, if you will – to her. I also knew her well enough to know that once an idea had taken root in her mind, she would not rest till it was implemented. I knew that it was no use arguing her out of the idea. My mind started racing on the options available. How could I remain married to her as well as ensuring that she got her wish? I quickly collected my wits and addressed her, ‘Dear, you’ve waited 21 years; do you mind waiting for 2–3 years more?’ Reluctantly, she agreed to wait. (In any case, beautiful as my wife is, I doubted if there was a willing doctor on the horizon. She seemed to be making a virtue out of a necessity, and I played along.) So now you know why I decided to do what I have done.”

It certainly was a unique way of looking at things. Humour happens when one looks at the same set of facts in a different light. Or the same word in different languages, as we will see presently.

A group of Indians were on vacation abroad. There was one Maharashtrian couple amongst the group. Maharashtrians are most comfortable in speaking in Marathi. However, since most of the others were comfortable in Hindi, one Mr. Lele wanted to impress one and all with his command over Hindi by rattling off a few shayaris here and there. His wife’s birthday was being celebrated by the group by cutting a cake. Mr. Lele held the first piece of cake and in ‘chaste’ Hindi, said, “ab main mere biwi ko ek ghaas khilata hoon.” (In Marathi Ghaas means a mouthful. Unfortunately, the same word means grass in Hindi, so what he said translated from Hindi as “now I am feeding my wife some grass.”) This had the group in splits at the unfortunate, inadvertent language switch.

Sometimes, great humour is built around exaggerating commonly observed characteristics of groups and communities. We all know, for example, enough Sardarji jokes and jokes about absent-mindedness of professors. Given below is an example of the special characteristics as well as humour that is the stamp of koknastha Brahmins.

Mr. Lele belongs to a community of Brahmins originally hailing from the coastal Maharashtra (Konkan), and renowned for their miserliness as much as intellect and their capacity of laughing at themselves. One such example involved another Mr. Lele who wanted to make a rubber stamp of his name. Instead of ordering a stamp with LELE, he thought of a brilliant solution that saved 50% of his cost and made a stamp with LE which he would use twice over to make LELE. Then he got a further idea. He stood near the court looking out for anybody named GOKHALE or DAMLE to whom he could rent out his stamp containing part of their names and recover his cost.

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Shobhana works for a Mumbai real estate group. Her interests include singing, watching plays and reading books on leadership and self-development. She devotes her spare time in spreading literacy to the less fortunate. Her motto in life is to be an exemplar.