Just for laughs

The French do not have an equivalent word for “humour”. Instead they have a word, “esprit”, which means wit. Le Figaro, the Parisian newspaper once pointed out that to get a telephone connection in Paris is not an achievement, it is a career.

In Mexico, an air-conditioner is called a “politician” because it makes a lot of noise but does not work well!

The American sense of humour is direct and easily understood. It uses graphic descriptions of people’s experiences. When a well-known American filmmaker was asked why he chose to make short films, he said, “The length of the film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder!”

It is generally believed that the Japanese lack humour. While in Japan, I asked the host to relate a Japanese joke. All conversation came to a halt. After a few minutes of awkward silence, one of them began to relate a story. I stopped him halfway because he was relating an American joke. The host, in self-defence said to me, “We are serious people. We take everything seriously. We have no clowns in Japan!”

In our country, while every region has its own brand of humour, it is the ‘sardar joke’ that unites us. What’s more, most of these jokes come to us from the Sikhs themselves, which is another reason why they are so loved and respected.

It does not really matter what provokes a smile or laughter, or from which state or country it emanates. What matters is that humour is one of our greatest and earliest natural resources and we must protect it at all cost.