Funny Ha-Ha!

"There is nothing like a gleam of humour to reassure you that a fellow human being is ticking inside a strange face." - Eva Hoffman

Humour has always held a special place in my life. First, jokes were made about me being an uptight child and I took offence to them. Next, I learnt that the best way to live was to not take myself too seriously and laugh along with the ones who thought of me as funny. Ironically, the laughs stopped and turned into gazes of admiration at my turn-around. But the humour stayed with me. It helped me sail through the time conundrum with ease. Humour helped lift the darkest veils from the most serious moments that I encountered. It made me laugh in times of loneliness and helped nip several confrontations in the bud even before they started. Humour, I realized, makes people likeable.  And now life is a series of constant setbacks lightened by the presence of gleams of humour in sporadic spells of pulchritude.

I do not think that I am funny. But I can laugh loudly at a good joke any day. By accident, I sometimes also end up making some of these jokes. I know people who swear by laughter. Their pure and unadulterated commitment to guffawing under all situations is commendable. I look forward to being in their company, if only to cringe at the occasional bad humour that springs up without intention. But every meet is memorable. I think about these people when I need an injection of enthusiasm. A simple upwards curve of the lips is a solution for most problems in life. If nothing else, this simple exercise undeniably always lifts the spirits. As a young girl, my uncle (mother’s brother) who lives in Delhi gave me snazzy joke-books to read when I visited him during summer vacations. Our dinner table conversations centered around humorous incidents in his personal and professional life. Some not-so-kind jokes about the sardaars in Delhi were his area of expertise. Those family meals were marked with remarkable camaraderie and a sense of ease. By showing us the side of him that always tickled a funny bone, my uncle became endearing simply for his effort of completely putting himself out there, without fearing our judgement or criticism.

Talking about funny people, my husband has turned out to be quite an amusing man too. I first fell for his constantly light mood. Next I realized to my amazement and relief, that he was extremely comic as well. He preserved in him a child-like allurement towards all things amusing. Fast forward to the present, my dumbest sentences become funny when he pin-points what’s wrong with them and spins a joke around it. His favourite show is ‘Seinfeld’ and in our spare time, we go watch stand-up comedies. He laughs at jokes that are sometimes even too sophisticated for my comprehension and thereafter patiently explains them to me following my quizzical expressions. In our cat-to-gossip sessions where we babble about people, I sometimes tell him stories about people to garner sympathy, but instead, he instantly finds them facetious and starts laughing. My mood then changes rapidly from dull to cheerful too and I feel a pang of love swell inside me for his breezy jocular temperament. Television viewing is almost strictly reserved for watching ludicrous shows. The meals shared over these shows encompass perpetual bursts of mirth. He makes me appreciate the presence of humour in life even more and for that I am eternally thankful. Because other than my acquired sense of humour, I am an intensely serious person.

When we moved to Chicago, I got the chance to make acquaintance with a new genre of comedy shows called – Improvised Comedy. These shows are almost similar in format to stand-up comedies, except some of their jokes are improvised on stage from the catch-phrases and situations offered by the live audience. Consequently, no two shows performed by the same group end up being similar. Scenes, poems and opera songs are spun live in the presence of guests from the words that are thrown up for the group. Various tools are employed back-stage to equip these artists to become instantly funny. No scripts and no pre-prepared drama is present. As my birthday gift this year, my husband took me to Chicago’s leading improvised comedy group show called – The Second City. It is an improvisational comedy enterprise, best known as the first ever on-going improvisational theatre troupe in the United States. They are known for the inclusion of live and improvised music during their performances.  I was completely thrilled by their presence of mind and quick wit. Mesmerized by this genre of comedy, we also got a bite of another group called - Four Day Weekend - in Houston, Texas. While they weren’t quite as good as The Second City, some of their jokes did make me fall off my chair. Jerry Seinfeld directed ‘Long Story Short’ performed on Broadway by Colin Quinn (named ‘History of the World in 75 minutes’) is also off our bucket list. The show was the best stand-up comedy that I think I will ever see.

The moot point remains that humour sustains me. It is the de-stressing pill that I pop in everyday to stay in my senses. My brother makes jokes all day, my DVR is flooded with funny recorded shows, I get gifted Calvin and Hobbes comics by my husband and the best time of the day is when I can share a hearty laugh with someone I like over something absurdly slapstick. Knee-slapping wagging humour lights up my days, people with jocose natures attract me and droll antics infinitely rule my attention spans. Like Erma Bombeck once said,

“When humour goes, there goes civilization." I couldn’t agree more.

(Written as a guest post for Project 365 on the Prompt Of The Day – Funny Ha-ha: Do you consider yourself funny? What role does humour play in your life and who is the funniest person you know?)