A sense of humour is no laughing matter. This sounds too much of a well worn- out aphorism to have originated from my keyboard, I fear. But, damn it, must I Google every funny and clever little thing I come up with, just to make sure some smart Alec hasn’t thought of it before and exhausted all available plaudits for it? The least I deserve is a few hours of smiley-faced sleep and recurring dreams of “Wah, Rangnathan saab, wah! Irshaad, irshaad,” (Damn north Indians – always miss that crucial ‘a’ of my surname), feeling chuffed that I brought this quip single-handedly into the world. No?

 

No, says my androoni aatma, that superfluous goddess made entirely of steam and mist who resides somewhere in my innards – possibly between the pituitary and the hypothalamus – forever directing me through her moral compass. “No Ranganthan, no,” she advises breathlessly. (Great – now she’s missed the other ‘a’.) “You must Google it!”, she whispers before whiffing back to her outhouse.

Bloody hell I must, and so I’ve clicked open a new tab and copy-pasted the first sentence in that famous confession chamber, the one that has the useless “I’m Feeling Lucky” button underneath it.

There you go. 3.6 million results. Bastards! That’s how depression sets in those who write funny stuff. And once they are depressed, they begin to write serious stuff and become famous. In the present case, it seems Spike Milligan, that master and commander of one-liners and funny stuff had thought of it originally. “A German sense of humour is no laughing matter,” he had quipped, to throes of thigh-whacking belly-slapping appreciation, which until three minutes ago I thought was coming my way.

Hurry! Not a moment to lose. I must think of something to justify my Funny Man Club yearning. Umm…think, think…OK  –  got it:

Whoever would’ve thought Mr. Chidambaram was from CPI(M)? That’s Congress Party of India (Maxist).

Now how about that, eh? This has to be original. I mean, it was only yesterday that our Home Minister was accused of having a link with Maxis-Aircel, was it not?

“Google it immediately, Ranganathan!” warns the compass-carrying bitch.

With trembling hands I drag the kicking and screaming last sentence to the Google guillotine.

I don’t believe it! Six results. Can’t funny guys ever make a living? This is awful. But wait! Look – it says on the top: “Showing results for Congress Party of India (Marxist), No results found for “Congress Party of India (Maxist).”

Triumph at last! Phew…the silly contentment that I derive from inventing witticisms, quips, and turns-of-phrases can keep me warm and well fed for a little while longer, I guess.

As one can see, the life of a budding satirist isn’t easy. Not as hard as that of a budding sitarist I admit, what with calloused fingers and having to remember those troublesome evening ragas, but still.

Difficult as it is to fathom, there is an enigmatic correlation between the two youthful buds. A satirist, just like a sitarist, needs a guru, first and foremost, from whom he can learn the skill, or he’ll be left simply tuning the initial bits of his masterpiece, exasperating his readers no end.

Then, the budding satirist can choose from a variety of gharanas: political satire, filmy innuendoes, slap-stick shenanigans or undemanding tomfoolery. He very quickly comprehends that were he to choose the first gharana – political satire – his art and talent will be restricted to a select audience, which will not include Members of Parliament. Riyazing his art in a dimly-lit barsati, he’d forever dread the midnight knock that delivers to him a Privilege Motion.

Also, it’s tough going for amateurs wanting to turn professional and wah-wahs are few and far between, and when they come you aren’t sure if they were meant for you in the first place: “You write well, Ranathan”, “Hee-he, that was funny, Rngntan”, “Rungunton, my man!”.

And finally, there’s always the danger of accidentally twanging the strings so jarringly for one tiny moment at the fag end of a mesmerising concert – against the grain, as they say – that it’s the only thing the bastards remember of the gig (“No doubt you played well, but what was that at the fag end, bro?!”)

Something similar happened with a guru of mine, Indrajit Hazra, the man who tucks a fag between his lips but doesn’t light it out of consideration. (I could make a full disclosure here but won’t – which Indian does?) As it turns out I have been reading him for eons, chuckling and chortling at his choice and play of words, mostly inwardly but on rare occasions outwardly too, embarrassing my family at airports and train stations. The man has never disappointed me, I have to admit. Some years ago, another admirer of his – a scientist friend – joined in and during tea time, which in a scientific institute lasts from 9 to 5, we’d discuss Hazra’s political satires and acutely funny observations on anything and everything.

Then, one day, it was as though my friend had lit Hazra’s pyre, collected the ashes and shipped them off to Rishikesh. “I’ll kill him, that bugger,” he said, grinding his teeth. “Who does he think he is?!”

Turns out my disgruntled friend was a huge Ajay Devgan fan and was incensed at what our favorite truth-seeker had quipped about him. I can’t remember much of the really funny piece but it was something to do with how terribly ugly the IPL trophy was – a child’s scrawl of India on a gold plate studded with one thousand and one jewels of all shapes and sizes. In rightly condemning such trophy atrocity, all Hazra had said was: “Next they’ll put jewellery on Ajay Devgan and call him beautiful”.

That was it, promise. Just that one single sentence, that made my friend do life-long kutty with our beloved Dronacharaya. No matter how many videos I later showed him of Devgan – with his contemptible mop flying this way and that; with his eyes not quite equidistant from his nose; with him idiotically caught standing between two moving bikes (how I secretly wished each would careen slowly in opposite directions); no matter howsoever much I tried to make him see reason, the damage had been done. Hazra lost a fan there, and for what? A solitary disharmonious note?

Things have gotten worse for satirists since Shane Warne lifted that Karan Johar-Bappi Lahiri atrocity four years ago. Folks now want to see their photographs on page 3, not their cartoons on page 1; they want marketing initiative eulogies, not sharp and stinging satires. Gustakhi Maaf, the Indian version of UK’s Spitting Image is a wishy-washy pale reflection of its fresh from the oven beginning, when one could actually admire the daring puppet Vajpayee and audacious puppet Sonia. One realises now that the bite was not in how they hopped and danced, but in what they said.

The headline writers, too, have fallen to their energy-minimums, reconciled to not ruffling feathers. Painters are not painting what they’d really like to paint, writers are not writing what they’d really like to write – only the politicians are doing what they’d really like to do. At the slightest of excuse, a library is vandalised, a media house ransacked. We are slowly becoming a nation of laughing buddhus, content with harmless Santa-Banta jokes but baying for blood the moment the joke’s on us. All we always seem to want is an apology. Can the satirists please gang up and do something that actually merits an apology – and then not give it? India expects.

This article first appeared in newslaundry on May. 10, 2012.