Mrs Schneiderman : I could do with some. Yasmeen, do keep us company.
Receptionist : Thank you very much, Mrs Schneiderman. Only a very, very, tiny drop.
Mr Schneiderman : [Pours brandy for everyone; then raises his glass] I don’t know what we are celebrating but I guess we are in a mood to get drunk. Here’s to everyone. [All except Conran-Smith raise their glasses]
Conran-Smith : I can tell you why we are in a mood to get drunk. We are in a bloody funk.
Mr Schneiderman : A bloody what?
Conran-Smith : Funk. Don’t you know what it means to be in a blue funk. We are plain scared.
Mr Schneiderman : [Imitating British accent] Speak for yourself, Smithy ole boy!
Conran-Smith : [Irritated] Don’t you ole boy me. I am scared and I admit it. Otherwise I would not be drinking this foul brew of festering grape. Here’s to the man-eater. [Gulp down his drink and helps himself to another]
Maharaja : There’s an example of gratitude for you! I have been given to understand that the British were a phlegmatic race; courteous and cool in times of crisis, nerves of steel and what have you.
Mathur : There is nothing to be scared of. We are perfectly safe in the hotel. If you keep your doors and windows shut you won’t even hear sounds from the jungle.
Conran-Smith : Nor the wailing from the village. We could shut out the world and drink ourselves silly—but the stupid world intrudes into our haven of refuge. What do we say to these villagers?
Mr Schneiderman : I dunno. It’s not our country so I guess it’s none of our business. We are visitors, you know! [Pointing to the Nehru poster and reading loudly] ‘Foreign visitors are our honoured guests.’ You don’t expect guests to pick your chestnuts out of the fire, do you?
Conran-Smith : That would go for me too; erstwhile ruler, now a not-so-honoured guest. I don’t think these villagers would understand why being American or British would free us of the obligation to help them. Of course they might expect a little more understanding and sympathy from their own countrymen.
[Mr Schneiderman pours himself a brandy, then holds it up to ask the others. In turn they all accept. They drink and smoke in silence for about a minute]
Mr Schneiderman : Well!
Conran-Smith : Well what?
Mr Schneiderman : Isn’t somebody going to do something to help these people? Mr Government of India . . .
Mathur : What can I or any government do in this situation? We are perfectly safe in the hotel; the villagers are looking after their safety as best as they can. Tomorrow I will send for the armed police to restore confidence in these peoples’ mind. There is no need for anyone to do anything immediately.
Maharaja : Also remember it’s a gazetted holiday. That goes for the armed police as well as the joint secretary; only death takes no holiday.
Mathur : [Angrily] You have done nothing except criticize the government and poke fun at me. Don’t you have any responsibilities any more? After all, all that you and your class have ever done in your lives is to drink and womanize and kill tigers. Why don’t you go out and shoot another one and add to your collection of tiger skins?
Maharaja : There is no reason to lose your temper, Mr Mathur. I do not deny that the princely order acquired certain standards of excellence in the art of drinking, associating with women and destroying dangerous animals—but as I have already told you I disinherited myself from my legacy. I do not drink except under a strain; for reasons of health I do not fornicate; and I am so peace-loving that I refuse to shoot any living thing even with a camera. Surely, this is your domain. You are the officer-in-charge. This hotel is in your parish. Our lives and safety and those of the villagers are your responsibility.
Conran-Smith : This in common English parlance is known as passing the buck.
Maharaja : An art which your people have mastered to perfection. And you, Mr Conran-Smith, have surely inherited the trait in full measure. None of the ills that beset the common run of mankind disturb your pipe-dreams of flowers and love. You should be the last one to accuse people of passing the buck.
Mr Schneiderman : Gentlemen, gentlemen. Let’s keep our tempers under control—and our heads on our shoulders. [Pours cognac in glasses] Let’s drink to peace, goodwill and understanding. [All except Conran-Smith raise their glasses and drink]
Conran-Smith : You got them in the wrong order—first understanding, then goodwill and finally peace. [Pours cognac into glasses] Another toast to get the sequence right.
All : To understanding, goodwill and peace.
Conran-Smith : Hallelujah.
Mathur : What?
Conran-Smith : Hallelujah means praise be to god.
Mathur : I did not think you believed in god.
Conran-Smith : I do not. I just like the sound of the word. Nice mouthful like Mesopotamia or Chatanooga or Saskatoon or Marwar Mandooa. My favourite Indian word is the name for the monkey god, Veer Bajrang Bali. Here’s to him.
All : To Veer Bajrang Bali.
Maharaja : In case you do not know. Veer Bajrang is our counter-part of your superman. He flew with a whole mountain on his shoulders so he could get a life-saving herb to Rama and Lakshman.
Mr Schneiderman : Sounds like a good guy. Let’s drink another one to him—whatever his name is [Pours cognac in glasses]
All : Veer Bajrang Bali.
Mrs Schneiderman : I am afraid all of us have had too much to drink. And I guess no one is anxious to be alone in their room. Why don’t we just relax here and keep each other company?
Conran-Smith : A jolly good idea. Maybe Miss Ahmed can get some nice sitar music on her radio. [Men arrange chairs to stretch legs, Receptionist fiddles with transistor]
Maharaja : If the music fails, Mr Mathur can tell us of the Five Year Plans—that will surely lull us to sleep.
[All laugh—a little drunk]
[Receptionist finds station with sitar music and places transistor on the table.]
Receptionist : There. Lovely psychedelic music. What do we say to the villagers?
Mathur : Nothing. They can wait. In any case they are sound asleep.
[Receptionist lowers the light of the lamps and finds herself an easy chair. Guests drop off to sleep one by one. The jungle sounds are more distinct. Maintain scene for a minute or more. Conran-Smith gets up, makes sure everyone is asleep. He tiptoes towards the Commissionaire, slowly extricates the gun out of his grasp and goes out of the trellis gate. After another minute, the roar of the tiger becomes louder and closer. Guests begin to wake in alarm and look around. There is a loud roar as when a tiger springs to attack, and then the report of a gun.]
Jokes
What’s So Funny?
Making up jokes is no laughing matter. It is a serious business requiring knowledge, insight and experience of what will make people laugh, what will go flat and fizzle out like a damp squib. First, we have to find out why people laugh. For some, the sight of a person with a big nose, a harelip or a stutter, a pot belly or a game leg is enough to set them laughing. Others want more action, like somebody slipping over a banana skin, to have the same reaction. One does not need to have a sense of humour to laugh at these. On the contrary, it betrays a total lack of it.
There are many things that make different people laugh. But trying to analyse laughter is like dissecting a frog. You may see its entrails and whatever else it has inside, but you will kill the frog in the process. You should just accept laughter as a phenomenon that releases tension and makes you feel lighter and happier. People of different ages react differently to different situations. A child will laugh when somebody stumbles down the stairs. A grownup will feel sorry for the same man because he has been through a similar experience. Even among grown-ups, the stimuli for raising a laugh differ from nation to nation. Although Europeans have a corpus of ethnic jokes about Jews, Scotsmen, Irishmen and Poles, they regard them as bad form. On the other hand, many of our jokes are aimed at certain communities. We make fun of Marwaris, Banias, B
awajis (Parsees), Mianbhais and Sardarjis. All of them are based largely on ethnic stereotypes which have no factual basis. Europeans indulge in black humour making jokes about death and funerals; we in India consider them in bad taste. However, we share the same interest in making jokes about our mothers-in-law and our wives. The wife’s brother, saala, as the butt of humour is an Indian speciality.
There is a fund of humour in all of us. The more it is sought to be suppressed the more it manifests itself. You forbid a person to laugh and he will laugh all the louder. Thus jokes about Hitler, Stalin, fascism and communism flourished in Russia and Germany. When General Zia-ul Haq imposed military dictatorship on Pakistan, he became the object of ridicule in his country. It was the same in India during the Emergency regime. Indira Gandhi became a target of humour when she suppressed the freedom of speech.
Getting a laugh out of other people is easier than being able to laugh at oneself. Only people with self-confidence can afford to laugh at their foibles. At one time (before ‘Operation Blue Star’) Sikhs rightly boasted of manufacturing the best of Sardarji jokes. Since then they have developed chips on their shoulders and take offence at jokes aimed at them. Nevertheless Sardarji jokes continue to flourish. Another community which excels in making jokes about itself and continues to do so are the Parsees. There is a sizeable collection of Bawaji jokes but they need to be related in Parsee Gujarati. I do not know of any other Indian community which has the self-confidence to poke fun at itself.
Not many people are aware that India has a long tradition of humour right from the times of Kalidas and other Sanskrit writers. Every generation has produced great humorists like Birbal, Tenali Raman and Gopal Bhat. Our bhands kept this tradition alive throughout the ages.
I have my own targets to aim at. Besides the powerful and the self-opinionated, I find name-droppers extremely ludicrous. There is hardly an Indian who does not indulge in self-praise and not-so-subtle name-dropping. These diseases afflict our politicians who are forever dropping hints about their closeness to the Prime Minister, chief ministers and the people in seats of authority. In addition, our politicians are also sanctimonious humbugs proclaiming their sacrifices for the country and dedication to social service. It is not very difficult to deflate their self-esteem with a carefully aimed pinprick. Self-praise I regard as a form of vulgarity which is found commonly among my countrymen. They will invariably preface it by words like ‘although I am saying it myself, out . . .’
The common man’s humour is of a lower order than the humour of a man of sophistication. The educated aesthete will respond to literary allusions, puns and jokes about poets, authors, composers and painters. They will mean nothing to the hoi polloi, Our film-going public enjoys jokes of the broadest type. A simple reference to a wife as the home minister will bring peals of laughter in an Indian audience. Any situation where a headstrong woman is humbled makes them rear. Our people have to be educated to understand and enjoy subtle humour.
The most sophisticated journals on humour are Punch and the New Yorker. They are not merely comic, but have highly sophisticated forms of wit, irony, sarcasm which tickle one’s fantasy. At times their cartoons are so subtle that it takes a long time pondering over them to catch what they are meant to convey.
There are not many jokes in print that will make you explode with laughter. The best that the print can hope to produce is a wistful smile. For explosions of laughter you have to have them told orally by a practitioner of the art of joke-telling. Fortunately they are to be found in every establishment and at every cocktail party. I am often asked to tell my favourite joke. I don’t have a top favourite but over a dozen which improve with each telling. Unfortunately most of my favourites are unprintable because they are dirty and sex-based.
Nevertheless, here are some from my collection, which my grand-daughter, Naina, has helped me choose.
Delhi
Khushwant Singh
Heard this One?
An American delegation on a visit to India were being shown round the capital. In the evening they were taken to the Secretariat for a panaromic view of Vijay Chowk and Rajpath. Came the closing hour and thousands of clerks poured out of their offices. The place was crammed with bicycles and pedestrians.
‘Who are all these people?’ asked the leader of the American delegation.
‘They are the common people of India; the real rulers of the country,’ proudly replied the minister accompanying the visitors.
A few minutes later came a fleet of flag-bearing limousines escorted by pilots on motorcycles followed by jeeps full of armed policemen. ‘And who are these?’ asked the American.
‘These are us,’ replied the minister with the same pride, ‘the servants of the people.’
Kakey da Hotel is a very popular eating-place in Connaught Circus. It started off as a humble Kakey da Dhaaba with stools and charpoys laid out on the pavement and, the tandoor, handees and pateelas placed in the open. With prosperity the kitchen went into the rear and a dining-room was furnished with tables, chairs as well as wash basin. One evening, a patron having finished his meal went to rinse his mouth in the wash basin. He proceeded to do so with great vigour; gargling, spitting thooh thooh and blowing his nose. This ruined the appetites of other diners who protested to the proprietor. Kakaji went to the rinser-spitter and admonished him. ‘Haven’t you ever eaten in a good hotel before?’ he demanded.
‘Indeed, I have,’ replied the errant mouth-rinser, ‘I have eaten at the Taj, Maurya, Oberoi, Imperial, Hyatt.’
‘What did they say to you when you rinsed your mouth making all these unpleasant sounds?’
‘They asked: “You think this is Kakey da Hotel?” And threw me out.’
A rich lady had a family of four children, all of whom turned out to be very bright. She was always boasting of their records at school and was sure when they grew up they would bring credit to India. I asked her somewhat sarcastically if she had ever heard of the family planning slogan hum do hamaarey do. ‘Yes,’ she replied somewhat haughtily, ‘that is for the aira ghaira—hoi poiloi—not for people like us who have highly intelligent children and can afford to give them the best of education.’
‘In that case why don’t you have five more and give India another nau ratans—nine gems?’
She ignored my sarcasm and replied: ‘I have just read a book on population statistics. It says that every fifth child born in the world is a Chinese.’
Nurul Alam from Silchar sends me a few lovely samples of bureaucratic wit of the days of the British Raj. One is an entry made by an executive engineer in the visitors’ book of a circuit house:
‘The veranda of the circuit house badly needs railings. During my momentary absence, a cow ate up some estimates which I had left lying on a table in the veranda.’ Below this note was the commissioner’s observation: ‘I find it hard to believe that even cows could swallow PWD estimates.’
In another circuit house book another executive engineer had noted: ‘The washbasin should be immediately replaced. I could not wash my face properly for want of proper facilities.’ Against this entry is a marginal note in the commissioner’s beautiful hand: ‘SDO will replace the washbasin at once. The executive engineer had to wash his face in tears during his last visit to this station.’
The prize remark is against a complaint that the latrine was too far away from the bungalow. ‘He should have started earlier,’ wrote the wit.
All these are attributed to one Mr Bentinck.
Two men met in heaven. ‘What did you die of?’ asked one.
‘I died of extreme cold. And what about you?’
‘I came home from work and thought I heard my wife talking to a stranger. On entering the house, I searched every nook and corner but could not find anyone anywhere. I felt so guilty of my suspicion that my heart failed.’
Hearing this, the other one said, ‘Had you cared to open the fridge, neither of us would have died.’
A gentleman travelled all the way from
Islamabad to Karachi to have an aching tooth taken out. The Karachi dentist said, ‘Surely you have dentists in Islamabad! You did not have to come all the way to have your tooth attended to.’
‘We have no choice. In Islamabad we are not allowed to open out mouths,’ replied the man with the aching tooth.
A party of American pressmen were granted an interview with Chairman Mao Zedong. After having heard the denunciation of the Soviet Union and other imperialist powers, one of the party asked the Chairman: ‘Sir, what in your opinion would have happened if, instead of John F. Kennedy, Mr Khrushchev had been assassinated?’
Chairman Mao pondered over the question for a while before he replied, ‘I doubt very much if Aristotle Onassis would have married Mrs Khrushchev.’
Duleepsinhji was playing in a test match for England against Australia. An English spectator turned to an Australian sitting next to him and asked: ‘Have you any princes in your team?’ The Aussie admitted they had none. ‘We have had many,’ boasted the Englishman. ‘Now take this fellow Duleep! As blue-blooded as any aristocrat in the world. And a damn fine cricketer too!’ Just then Duleep hit a sixer. ‘See what I mean?’ exploded the Englishman. The next ball knocked Duleep’s centre wicket. The Englishman yelled: ‘He’s out! The bloody nigger!’
You have to be a master of words to mix flattery with satire. Our ancestors knew the art better than we. Badauni in his Mantakhab records some incidents when recipients of rewards were able to combine their disappointment with the gift with flattery for the emperor in the hope of receiving more.
One was the poet Anwari who was presented with an old horse which gave up the ghost on the very night it had been delivered at Anwari’s home. Next morning the poet came to court on foot. ‘What happened to the horse we presented you yesterday?’ asked the emperor.
Replied the poet: ‘It was so fleet-footed that in one night it traversed the distance from the earth to heaven.’
Not a Nice Man to Know Page 51