The Joke is on Me
My friend Siddharth Sinha recently sat for the entrance test at Jadavpur University and he showed me the question paper. There was an essay topic there which was something like “True humour originates from sorrow” It got me thinking, and I am going to give the essay a shot.
True Humour Originates from Sorrow
“Life is full of tragedy and therein lies it’s comedy” This was a chance remark I made to my mother just this morning. We have all heard the anecdote about the man who slipped on a banana peel. Our first instinct should be to help him but instead we laugh at him. His pain. Why? It’s because we have all been there. By that I mean we have all been in pain and laughed it off. I guess that is where the term “Grin and bear it” comes from.
Think about this for a second. Why do we laugh when Tom tries to blow up Jerry’s mouse hole and fails or his bowl gets upset by the aforementioned mouse? All the elaborate schemes that Wile-e Coyote hatches to catch the Roadrunner inadvertently end up with him falling into his own trap. All of us have been in splits whenever we see these cartoons haven’t we?
Permit me one more example. There was this serial in the 1970’s called M*A*S*H which was short for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. It was about a team of doctors stationed 3 miles from the warfront. Each day, ambulances, helicopters and jeeps used to flock to their unit containing mutilated bodies. Soldiers who had been wounded. The doctors would operate for days, “meatball surgery” as they called it, desperately trying to save as many of the soldiers as they could. Their unit was nothing but a bunch of 5 odd tents. They had to be ready to move at anytime because there was no telling when the enemy would begin bombing. No proper sanitation, cockroaches, lice, dysentery and of course death all around. In the midst of all this, some of the best one-liners and other jokes I have heard.
Once again, we find this sorrow playing out before us funny. We can identify with it. All of us have our inner demons, fears and struggles to go through in our lives. That’s why we humans need a little something to keep that sorrow at bay. Call it a necessity, or just our instinct of self preservation. You see, humor is not just your friend cracking a joke about something or the other. Even when the joke is on you. Humor is a weapon, programmed into us that helps us forget the troubles, the pain, the loss and just makes us let it go. It prepares us to face the next downslide. Humour builds up a wall, a dam protecting us from sorrow.
To close, let me ask you a question. What if one day, you woke up and found that all the humour in the world was gone? You would be able to see the sun, read the newspaper, tell black from white.
But, would you be alive? Would you be….sane?
The Bilge Master
My friend Siddharth Sinha recently sat for the entrance test at Jadavpur University and he showed me the question paper. There was an essay topic there which was something like “True humour originates from sorrow” It got me thinking, and I am going to give the essay a shot.
True Humour Originates from Sorrow
“Life is full of tragedy and therein lies it’s comedy” This was a chance remark I made to my mother just this morning. We have all heard the anecdote about the man who slipped on a banana peel. Our first instinct should be to help him but instead we laugh at him. His pain. Why? It’s because we have all been there. By that I mean we have all been in pain and laughed it off. I guess that is where the term “Grin and bear it” comes from.
Think about this for a second. Why do we laugh when Tom tries to blow up Jerry’s mouse hole and fails or his bowl gets upset by the aforementioned mouse? All the elaborate schemes that Wile-e Coyote hatches to catch the Roadrunner inadvertently end up with him falling into his own trap. All of us have been in splits whenever we see these cartoons haven’t we?
Permit me one more example. There was this serial in the 1970’s called M*A*S*H which was short for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. It was about a team of doctors stationed 3 miles from the warfront. Each day, ambulances, helicopters and jeeps used to flock to their unit containing mutilated bodies. Soldiers who had been wounded. The doctors would operate for days, “meatball surgery” as they called it, desperately trying to save as many of the soldiers as they could. Their unit was nothing but a bunch of 5 odd tents. They had to be ready to move at anytime because there was no telling when the enemy would begin bombing. No proper sanitation, cockroaches, lice, dysentery and of course death all around. In the midst of all this, some of the best one-liners and other jokes I have heard.
Once again, we find this sorrow playing out before us funny. We can identify with it. All of us have our inner demons, fears and struggles to go through in our lives. That’s why we humans need a little something to keep that sorrow at bay. Call it a necessity, or just our instinct of self preservation. You see, humor is not just your friend cracking a joke about something or the other. Even when the joke is on you. Humor is a weapon, programmed into us that helps us forget the troubles, the pain, the loss and just makes us let it go. It prepares us to face the next downslide. Humour builds up a wall, a dam protecting us from sorrow.
To close, let me ask you a question. What if one day, you woke up and found that all the humour in the world was gone? You would be able to see the sun, read the newspaper, tell black from white.
But, would you be alive? Would you be….sane?
The Bilge Master
Nah, I wont be alive then. Humour is the reason we laugh.It's the most formidible weapon, be it for flattering chicks( as pick-up lines) or making a 12 year kid laugh. It's something instintive, It's beautiful.
ReplyDeleteAs for essay. It's ok :p
Thanks- stay tuned
ReplyDeleteGood one! Though I would advocate just a tiny bit of sorrow in life to fully appreciate its funny bits. Thankfully, the two are not directly proportional to each other!
ReplyDeleteExactly my point...without sorrow there is no humor just as without silence there is no music...
ReplyDeleteThanks!