Humour

Naradaa wanted to write humour in the blog. It must be much easier than writing suspense stories, thrillers or sad and soul-stirring kind of stories.

Take suspense stories. Most of the suspense stories are such that half-way through, the suspense is all gone and you already know who the villain is. Thrillers don’t thrill anybody anymore since they thrive on imagination which is a rare commodity.

And for soul-stirring kind of stories, we have search for the souls first before stirring them.

So, Naradaa decided to write humour. After all, who doesn’t like a bit of comedy and laughter?

But after Naradaa wrote a humorous story, he realized it was not that simple. Naradaa was confident it was good humour because even while writing the story, he kept laughing, prompting the maid who came to serve the coffee to go away giggling – probably thinking that her employer had gone off the rocker. And when Naradaa tried to read the story to a group of friends, a few of them left half-way through. (Few who remained did not go because they had fallen asleep).

So, Naradaa started thinking what is humour? Making fun of guys? Then one has to be careful and should make fun of only selective people. A street-dada, if he gets to know that you have made fun of him, is going to do very unpleasant things to you, like break your arms and legs etc. Different people react differently to humour when it is directed towards themselves. So, be careful when you write a humorous skit or story or a enact a comedy drama or draw caricatures etc.

Chakyar Koothu in Kerala used to be an example how humour was used for highlighting social problems. The performing 'Chakyar' could criticize anyone - not even the king was an exception - without being reprimanded. Later, magazines took over this through humorous comments - written and drawn. 

It is essential that the people who read humour as well as people at whom the humour is targetted should understand the humour part of it.  I think it was Sanjayan, a humorist of yesteryears who said that humour is in the mind of the reader. If the guy who reads doesn’t understand the humour aspect of what you have written, you just can’t do anything about it.