Reading Space: Humour in Indian popular literature | An article by Zac O'Yeah

Anyway, demographics isn't my area of expertise and as a matter of fact I don't even know what the word means, so I'll get back to the point instead. I was telling Madam Slice-of-Life (*name changed), an entertainment industry professional, what I must have told her umpteen times before. But she is, luckily, very susceptible to beer, which is totally abundant in Bengaluru. It unfailingly induces amnesia in her with the result that the next time we meet is always the first time. It makes her the perfect agony aunty.

After less than seven pints, I am halfway through my saga. Or she would call it a rant, but as long as I keep the pitchers coming, she listens. I had clinched a book deal and after the initial elation, I got scared. She burps, 'So, what's your problem?'

Well, I had been super-duper-happy that my publisher found my novel funny enough to publish. Then she sent me a contract full of indemnity clauses that basically suggested I might go to jail for writing it. 'Yours is a truly incredible country full of incredibly incredible people, but it is also the republic of hurt sentiments, the kingdom of trolls, the geographical space with the greatest number of riots per capita. One person is a potential mutiny, two is a debate program on TV and three a separatist movement. And when the curry hits the fan, would you want all that in your inbox, post box or lunchbox?'

'Sounds like home-delivery food to me,' she says. 'Shall we order lunch by the way?'

I explain that I attempted to write a tribute to Indian humour. To me it seems to be, basically, of two kinds. There's the gentle, traditional style, best exemplified by RK Narayan's novels – such as the starving guru in The Guide dreaming of the bonda balls from one particular shop and thinking to himself, 'he was the sort of vendor who would not hesitate to fry a thing in kerosene, if it worked out cheaper. With all that, he made delicious stuff...', or the American-returned son in The Vendor of Sweets with his phoney novel-writing machine, a scam project through which Narayan takes gentle but delightful pot-shots at the literary industry. The jokes are never in your face, or bawdy, and it took me some amount of reflection before I even understood that it was humour.

'Balls! No bonda for me. I want non-veg,' my friend decides.

The other kind, I patiently carry on, is the one coloured by Bollywood and which is perhaps slightly less toned down, or let us say, more akin to loudmouthed but rib-tickling slapstick. It is taken to its extreme in the coprophiliac jokes exemplified by the scripts of films like Delhi Belly with its latrine laughs, and Piku – in which Amitabh Bachchan has constant constipation and travels with a potty on top of his car. 'So, the bandwidth would appear to be rather wide when it comes to what is viewed as funny or what can be made fun of in India. Yet, one keeps reading about alleged cases being slapped this way and that on those who allegedly might redistribute an allegedly innocuous caricature on Facebook or allegedly forward something allegedly funny on email, and the alleged perpetrators allegedly land up in jail and are allegedly never heard of again. So hence, how does a foreign gentleman of semi-refined sensibilities deal with this without, for example, hurting the alleged sentiments of your good alleged self?'

'So as far as I can see, the only way around it is to get yourself health insurance.'

'Meaning, madam? Can I make the down-payment right now,' I ask as I multitask and wave for another pitcher.

'You insure yourself by anticipating and incorporating the offended reactions into your book itself – say, by warning readers that they are solely responsible for choosing to read something written by a deracinated firang who doesn't know his IKEA from his elbow. And stop using the word alleged.' She orders a plate of chicken. 'What chicken?' asks the hotel boy. 'Any as long as it is dead enough not to cackle at our jokes', she tells him.

She's joking, I think to myself, but aloud I say: 'Would you still say that non-Indians should indulge in humour, madam-ji? Is it worth the trouble?'

'It's a call you have to take. I should have asked you first if this is supposed to be a serious conversation? Or just a topic we should enjoy for fun? If you are being serious, I am going to deny that there is such a thing as "Indian" humour. There may be Sardar-ji jokes, and Mallu comedy, and Gujju entertainment, but I really have no idea what "Indian humour" is unlike, say, British humour, which we know differs from the American, or various branches thereof like Jewish humour.'

My heart sinks and I have to look for it at the bottom of my pint: 'Now this is getting very academic, ma'm-ji. My main concern is to figure out how safe it would be for a foreigner to let us say, try crack a joke? For example, when it comes to preventing malaria, one can put the Odomos, but is there a condom for humour-related problems?'

She broods about this in that selfie-staged social-media-influencer way of hers, while she empties yet another pitcher at my cost and I worry that she's going to store my question in the amnesiac segment of her superior intellect. Meanwhile I think of how, in the writing classes I teach which are actually on no-nonsense subjects like suspense and travelogue and other not-so-funny topics, aspiring writers often ask me if I can teach humour writing instead which apparently seems more fun to them. At this, I have developed one stock reply: But I am not funny. They usually laugh and exclaim, 'That's very funny!' As it turns out it is difficult for them to comprehend such a simple sentence, so I end up giving lengthy explanations of how good humour, especially mine, provided that it can be said that I have some, is never strategically planned. Being intentionally fun is almost impossible, all things considered. Being intentionally hurt, is much easier. One just needs to surf to a webpage such as this one.

But then the umpteenth pitcher arrives, and Madam Thrice-as-Nice (*name changed again) seems to wake up from her trance. She goes, 'If I understand you correctly...'

'Surely don't misunderstand wrongly,' I counter.

'But there are condoms for humour in India!' she exclaims as she splashes costly microbrew on my cheap khadi shirt.

I feel relieved and am about to order shots so that we can go on kidding, until I hear her name innumerable numbers of twitterati-gurus and other online-maniacs that are detrimental to a nation's sense of humour, which results in me paling and sobering and calling for the bill and a taxi to Nepal. But she goes on, 'You could probably joke about many things if you are on stage and it is intended to be a funny show, but not in conversational setting like this. You might hurt my sentiments. So, for you it might be wiser to focus on laughing heartily at jokes cracked by me and other Indians, rather than cracking your own jokes.'

'Okay, ha-ha you're better than Chaplin, got it,' I say and by then luckily my Uber to south of Colombo via Mount Everest has arrived. I escape before Madam Wise-as-Lies (*name changed once more) starts a laugh riot. Though I can't be too sure that she's my friend anymore. On the other hand, like I pointed out, her memory is always wiped out by the thirty-third beer, so maybe by the time we meet again she'll have forgotten what-all nonsense we said tonight. Anyway, in my own case, I am going to erase this file from my hard drive before I press the send button. Oops, wrong button!

ZAC O'YEAH is the author of the 'Majestic Trilogy' of detective novels set in his adopted hometown of Bengaluru.