Laughter challenge
Where are you? You think you can get away after insulting our supreme leader? We’ve bulldozed your offices already,” growls the committed party worker to the comedian over the phone. “In Tamil Nadu,” comes the reply. “Come, get me!” “You know I can’t get you there. But we will get you at some point,” says the party worker and bangs the phone down. Another popular stand-up comedian surfaces in another clipping. “Somebody called me from Jhalawad yesterday and threatened me for supporting my fellow comedian,” he says. “He said come to Jhalawad, and we shall give you full treatment.”
“Why should I go to Jhalawad only to be beaten up?” Comedian 2 asks his giggling audience in Mumbai. “Arre, if you want to beat me up, at least come to the outskirts of my town and call me up to say you’ve come to beat me up. Then, I might even consider your proposal.”
The young audience that packs the auditorium is in hysterics. And these short clips are playing all over our social media that thrives on such fare.
No matter how vigorously governments claim to support free speech, hardly any politician believes people should get to say what they want, however they want. Even stand-up comics, whose widely accepted role is that of a tribe that speaks truth to power, say the unsayable to shock and surprise. In a recent interview, American stand-up comedian John Early twists the dagger some more when he says it’s just a weird time to be a comedian. “We give so much power to the comedians and their platforms and I’m absolutely horrified by it!”
Every empire led by a supreme leader feels vastly threatened by comedians and court jesters. In Sanskrit plays, he is referred to as vidushak (the polluter), but the playwrights rightly declare he is unassailable because he alone can speak out and bring the house down when all others look away.
Each age has such characters who usually are a part of a neglected fringe minority, exploited and left to fend for itself. Right after the First World War, around 1920, when many European writers were writing about the new and radiantly emergent European super empires, a Jewish writer from Prague, Karel Capek, wrote ‘RUR’, a dark comedy about robots (from which the Czech word ‘robot’ was derived and acquired a universal meaning). His play was about robots who suddenly begin to defy their clever human creators, defeat them and go on to establish a perfect totalitarian regime. The robots win over their human creators, the play tells the audience, because they are more insensitive and have far greater self-discipline.
Capek was the contemporary of another great writer, Jaroslav Hasek. Like the Jewish Capek, Hasek, too, was a member of a Czech minority annexed by the Austrian empire with which his people did not identify, either politically or culturally. He was a drunkard who routinely attended Czech anarchic meetings in Prague and produced a dark and hugely popular comic novel, ‘The Good Soldier Schweik’. The Europe these writers inhabited was created by larger empires cannibalising smaller states with varied cultures.
Their notion of what is comic arises out of marginalised men’s take on the dominant culture and notions of its own about rationalism and art that remain totally incomprehensible and irrational for the minorities.
In Delhi, when the grand Mughal empire was slowly coming apart under the rule of an eccentric and weak Mohammad Shah, also known as Rangeele Piya (the colourful lover boy), we meet another soul brother to our modern stand-up comedians. The chief among them was one Karela Bhand (the bitter gourd comic). Karela was known for his sharp tongue and quick repartee. Once, stung by his heckling, the emperor asked that he leave his kingdom forever! “Door ho ja meri nazron se hamesha ke liye!” Karela left with his band of little comics.
The next day, as the emperor’s sawari was passing through the heart of Delhi, they suddenly heard a loud bellowing of lewd songs accompanied by drums coming from above. The culprits were located sitting atop the large trees that flanked the imperial path and playing as though there was no tomorrow.
“Why? Hadn’t we ordered you to go away out of our sight, out of our empire immediately?”
“So you did Huzoor,” lisped Karela, “but you see, the Sultanat-e-Mughaliya is so vast, we could not get away soon. We therefore decided to move upwards towards heaven, the only place that belongs to our Allah. This is our first stopover to heaven and we are celebrating our safe arrival!”
As the crowds guffawed, the Badshah asked his prime minister to get the idiots down and not make the mockery larger. This was done and Karela and his ilk were brought down to earth and given a bakhshish of a bag of gold. The Badshah instinctively recognised that entertainment may be a court jester’s prime responsibility, but he could also risk speaking the harsh truth to emperors and go unpunished.
Unlike in those feudal times, today’s jesters are dealing with both the state police forces and party goons. The only platform left for them is to go on and appeal for sanity and ask for justice. But in the age of revolutionary changes in communication, many popular public channels are being bought by touchy and sycophantic money bags with clear party affiliations. This is creating a hostile environment where the comedians are supposed to bind themselves to strict party guidelines on what is proper and what is not.
The best comedians will, however, always touch upon what is deemed untouchable. In doing so, they, like Karela, the Bhand, are holding a mirror to the power pack and also releasing public laughter that alone can render the totalitarian helpless in the long run.
Amid this ugly backlash and state orgies of bulldozing buildings, there is a lesson somewhere for obeying their bosses too often too unthinkingly, and indulging in criminal acts. They do not also seem to be aware how they themselves may be creating a parallel high comedy by calling up comedians inviting them to Jhalawad or Mumbai to be beaten up!
If they can’t handle laughter, let them not enter politics!
— The writer is a veteran journalist
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