The unbearable sickness of laughter

Now, how all this fits in with our politicians’ recently developed proneness for jokes and humour? Yesterday, even the most caddish or boorish of them bore a smug seriousness that looked convincing, nearly reassuring. At least, it gave you the feeling that politics was serious. But, all of a sudden, our politicians have started cracking jokes — in utterly serious situations, mind you, or haven’t you noticed it? Ask a question, about a rape or murder case, or about other politicians and their scam pedigrees. Pat comes the joke which obviously entertains a highly receptive audience — receptiveperhaps because they too are vulgar to the core or because they feel it downright greedy to expect anything better from the politicians. At any rate, the joke conceals the authoritarian bearing of the joker. The politicians in their fancy (which could have accommodated virtual reality decades before it was born in the computer) may regard it as a tradition-bound reversal, one that would take them to the golden age of wizard jesters like Birbal and Tenali Raman. Will they compare?

Notwithstanding their official designation as jesters, the genuine Birbals and Ramans never felt it incumbent upon them to resort to coarse jokes to entertain and engage an audience. The tales that got amassed in our childhood memories speak of two wise, brilliant men to whom humour was a matter of stylistics, not a way, the easiest and most inexpensive way, of manipulating masses through vulgar laughter. Their eye-openers were fine paradigms in problem solving, often couched in a kind of fuzzy logic too advanced for their times and too dear to the very advanced.

But now we have only witless jokers – not a very heretic statement about politicians, but the joker’s etymology is more startling than any heresy.

Two common functions of the joker in card games are well-known. It will climb and squat neatly on your ear when you are busted. Secondly, a joker is a wildcard: lacking a symbol and denomination of its own, it can assume those of any card in the deck. And to top it all, the Americans have given another meaning to the word: “clause added without warning to a document, which changes its effectiveness in a way that may not become immediately apparent.” Every piece is kosher political stuff.

Back to Hugo’s Parisian night. Time for Quasimodo to appear at the wall-opening. When he peers at the audience, the immediate reaction is pure shock, because his face is inhumanly grotesque. Then follows the biggest laughter of the anti-authoritarian night, because the title-winning face is no theatrical contrivance, it is a permanent fitting. Yes, Quasimodo’s face is real. Project it in anyway you want to on to the Indian scene, but make a distinction: Quasimodo is an honourable man.