Dunno what you were doing last week but I spent much of it laughing and marveling. I was laughing at the latest emerging brilliance of our stand-up comedians and in-house funnymen. And I was marveling at how far we have come from timorous since mid-2017, from timid mice to swash-buckling heroes finally speaking truth to power.
Impossible not to laugh, chuckle, giggle, guffaw and (yes) snigger at the river of jokes, jibes, jabs, broadsides, swipes and cuts directed at last to the great institution of democracy in India and the leadership it has thrown up. So I was delighted to watch Kunal Kamra of The Comedy Club fame in full form as he took everyone and everything down. Ambaniji, Modiji, Shahji were all grist to his mill, as he wondered why we can’t have the former as prime minister, seeing how he practically owns us anyhow: how Nitaji would make a proper First Lady instead of the current one we have – Shahji; how the political landscape would change if, in fact, Big Corp fought each other for the Prime position.
Nor is Kamra the only one. They’re all making jokes now – Shyam Rangeela with his take-off on Modi and Rahul Gandhi, Dhruv Rathee’s deadpan observations of political developments, Sohrab Pant of East India Comedy. The humour is broad, the riff often desi, the language iffy. For instance, Kamra’s footage is prefaced with a disclaimer, a warning that it is meant for over 18s, that the language could be considered coarse, the themes “mature”. Darn right it is, but nothing we aren’t used to hearing in the course of the day. And a lot of it is what we want to say to very large audiences in the hope that they will get to the powers that be!
I think it was Demonetisation that did the trick. Till then, our comedians were playing safe, blandly sticking to family, society, national identity, quirks and foibles. Even then, it took almost six months for simmering rage to manifest itself, and for our comedians to tap into this rich seam. And boy, is it paying off!
Politics is changing the game for increasing numbers of our comedians, already brilliant, talented, but stunted by repression and fear. Now it is as if a large part of the country has thrown off its fear and declared that if we are not to cry, we had better laugh.
We’re laughing – and how! The lines are being written, the routines burnished, and we should be thanking our politicians for making it so easy to mimic speeches and lines and gestures that have gone down to a public that seems to regard everything now as entertainment.
And what power there is in this laughter, as if through it we are reclaiming our beloved country for ourselves.
It may not be all great. Dubguru Luckie’s latest offering for Sarcasm India, on the (what else) Ambani wedding has some laughing their heads off, others sniffing disdainfully, but you gotta admire the guy for doing such synced up dialogue. And there’s no faulting his imagination, which runs riot.
Sure, we’re not even close to the position that late night comedy holds in America, with Colbert, Kimmel, Fallon, Meyers, Oliver commenting regularly on policy as well as the movers and shakers. And we may be light years away from ‘Yes Minister’ and ‘Yes Prime Minister’. What we have shown without a doubt is that the talent is there, burning bright, waiting to make itself known and shown.
Even more importantly, as a nation we are genuinely beginning to laugh at ourselves, ironically at a time when laughing can be construed by some idiots as sedition.
Comedy Nation! It has a ring to it.
