Where is the sense of humour?

Some people are funnier than the rest. They are easily the soul of any party with their spontaneous wit and sense of humour. Humour attracts people like bees to honey. Yet, increasingly people find it easier to laugh at someone else, rather than with. When the joke is on them, very few have the magnanimity to laugh it off. We are very serious people. Our self-esteem depends on what people think or make of us rather than we ourselves feel about ourselves. Really, even if we view ourselves objectively and come up with a few positive points, we still feel unsure till someone else seconds it. Why is it easy for some to laugh easily while some take even an innocuous comment to heart, their ego bruised very easily?

Sometimes a funny or humourous person is not taken seriously as the rest of the "serious" lot feels that the person has a lackadaisical approach towards life and cannot be trusted with more important tasks. But without them or the spice of humour, don't you think our lives will be such a drab! Think of your daily office routine. There will be at least one funny chap who is always surrounded by people during break times (and even non-break times) to have their usual quota of laugh for the day, to get rejuvenated enough to get back to the boring stuff. The tele-shows (and am not talking about the forever laughing Siddhu and Archana Puran Singh) that have a humourous take on life are definitely a welcome change from most of the other routine tear-jerking ones.

Writing is tough but writing humour/satire is tougher. For some, it just comes naturally. It is as though you are in front of the person listening to their funny anecdotes. Is there any surprise then, blogs or blog-posts that are filled with satire and humour get the most number of visitors? When the going gets tough, it is only a little loosening of yourself, a little laugh, a little joke shared that keeps one sane and helps to get a fresh perspective to life. It's not for nothing that even doctors vote for laughter as the best medicine.

Yet, we keep shunning humour when it is most needed. The recent political row over banning of cartoons in text books just shows how childish and immature we can get. Seriously, you cannot digest a cartoon depicting a satirical view, how do you weigh the enormous responsibility of leading the country on your rigid shoulders, then? "Cartoons in text books can damage impressionable minds. It is for adults and not children". Really? since when humour became an adult thing and whom are you kidding when you say children are far away from truth these days? Sometimes I feel the youngsters these days are far more serious than we were. They are much more in need of good humour and light-heartedness. Yes, sometimes hitting someone below the belt and hurting someone intentionally does happen in the name of humour. Every good comes with its share of bad. Simply because someone cut his finger, one does not throw all the knives out of the window. Satire is just a way of expression and when the humour in it is lost, it is in a sense, a loss of a better way of looking at things. Sadly, for children of today even a sense of humour would come with a price tag.

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