Vol 2 | Issue 1 | April 2013

Digging for our funnybone

Whats Inside
Viewpoint is a quarterly thought publication produced by The PRactice. Please send your views and feedback to [email protected] | www.the-practice.net The (Censored) India Story The Private Joke Moves Online | Letting Satire Grow Up The Less Scripted Route in Communication | And more...

By suppressing humour, we are missing many opportunities for leveraging it in storytelling.

A Dearth of Mirth in Public Life

Indians do know how to laugh. Comedies regardless of their quality do well at the box office. We definitely relish a good joke, traded across the lunch table or within the soundproof confines of our living rooms. But while humour is a great levelling agent in communication it makes topics relatable, people respond to it better and remember it longer its usage in politics, business or pop culture is weak, at best. This is not entirely a laughing matter. By suppressing humour, we are missing many opportunities for leveraging it in storytelling. For example, political cartoonists are adept at highlighting the quirks of people and personalities. In the right hands, cinematic satire can be incisive and telling. And in the world of corporate communication, humour can be a refreshing and highly effective tool. Unfortunately, these storytellers and communicators are perpetually wary of offending and triggering a backlash of one kind or the other. Consequently, our national funny bone lies fossilised by layers of over-sensitivity and outrage. In this issue, our writers discuss the societal consequences of holding back on humour in traditional media and communication. One contributor looks

at what prompts people to take previously restricted comic material and freely share it on social networks. Finally, in Alterpoint, we discover how humour can shield us from the pain and annoyances of daily living. Former US president, Ronald Reagan, never lost a chance to lighten a seemingly grim situation. He is said to have once remarked: I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself. The genius of his style lay in the fact that it made even political adversaries smile and amenable to his ideas. Jokes and humour clearly work where jibes and threats dont.

In This Issue:
The (Censored) India Story - Can we film, write about, or illustrate any subject any longer without inviting the ire of some group? The Private Joke Moves Online - Limited circulation jokes of the past have thrown off their shackles and moved into a bold, new realm. Letting Satire Grow Up - Satire in Indian cinema is a niche genre with only a handful of filmmakers prepared to tackle it. Are we ready to let it occupy a bigger stage now? The Less Scripted Route - Humour is underutilised in business communication but that can change if we shift our approach from scripting to storytelling. Alterpoint: The Armour of Humour - A tongue-in-cheek review of lifes best coping mechanism.

The (Censored) India Story

We seem to be becoming ever more prickly as a nation, judging by recent crackdowns on books, movies, online content and more. The groups that love to take offence will not let context or time interfere with their quest to censor, ban and condemn.

Is this an endless season for touch-menots? Put pen to paper, stylus to touchpad or mouse-click on the forward icon and before you know it, you have offended someone, somewhere. Someone big, organised or networked enough to give you the kind of trouble you hadnt bargained for. In the seventh decade of our democratic practice when it should be stable and mature and well past teething trouble, second thoughts are floating up on its very kernel free speech. The venerable re-thinkers owe their rise to the selfsame adversarial debate they want to hush. Thats not surprising. Some climbers have to kick the ladder. The message is writ large: Give us your free vote but no free speech. This new self-limiting democracy is yet to find a public forum or legal sanction but is merrily being orchestrated by the street smart and the net savvy. A faceless academic clan on Facebook can take offence as readily as a pressure group in flesh and blood.

Which is all very well. Everyone has the right to protest, persuade and opinion-make. Where it hurts is how swiftly the one-sided exercise becomes actionable. A routinely censored film is blocked; a book is banned; an author is kept out as a security risk; a cartoonist is jailed; two school girls are traumatised for a casual chatty quip on the net. Such things happen in the best of democracies. But not all of the above happen in a matter of a year or less across three quarters, to be exact. Cant tell what the next quarter will bring. It could turn out to be even more eventful. While on quarter, let us recall the worthies who brought the Q-word

line India became a global brand and the Indian democracy a sub-brand. Until the 1990s, our Nehruvian democracys high points were at the foreign office whenever our spokesperson lectured Pakistan. Since then, however, our dusty noisy electoral system has found a new salience in plusher chambers of trade and commerce. An Asian Democracy was finally beginning to perform in terms the global accountant could apprise. The boardroom appreciation came with quarterly pep talk which went like this: the shrinking planets scant resources would most likely converge in countries with transparent governance and a lawful system. These virtues curiously coexist

By E.P. Unny E.P. Unny is the Chief Political Cartoonist at the Indian Express.

into our parlance: the late Narasimha Rao and Dr. Manmohan Singh. Between them, they opened up the economy and somewhere down the

with irreverence, defiance and humour. So, stay delightfully chaotic and businessfriendly.

Contemporary groups are taking retrospective umbrage much the same way as governments levy retro taxes.

BJP, the House thunderously approved. These inappropriate cartoon-makers did nothing new to fall from sarkari grace. These are archival cartoons targeting yesteryear newsmakers and not the ones who are now up in arms. Contemporary groups are taking retrospective umbrage much the same way as governments levy retro taxes. The junked cartoons are the very ones on which stalwarts like Shankar, Kutty and Laxman built up their reputations day by day. Some have won Presidential awards for their work and what is the incumbent government doing about it? Reviewing and withdrawing the honours with alacrity. How can there be politically incorrect Padma Bhushans and Vibhushans? Class XI students, among others, could get the wrong message. They are an impressionable lot. Keep them away from old cartoons and possibly from a bigger danger that is looming large. All of seventeen, they are eligible to vote in the next parliamentary election. Do you really think they are ready? If you arent sure, do legislate to raise the voting age to a mature 45. Disclaimer: These 800 odd words have been run through an offence detector and cleared. But then the device is only calibrated for current levels of offence. There is always the risk of someone taking offence in the future retrospectively.

The Private Joke Moves Online

In days gone by, people who liked to tell jokes would find a readymade and largely forgiving audience in close friends and members of their family. With the growth of social networks, the private joke has thrown off its shackles.

We felt good on all counts. Our globalising, growth-seeking state should then have gone out of its way to show off its free citizens. And the rising classes, on their part, should have projected a liberal image. Neither happened. Just as our democracy and demography began to pay dividends, we turned prickly. Is it because our economy isnt doing as well as it once was? Is free speech a luxury we can indulge in when we are growing at 8% plus and not at the slippery 6%? Nobody says so in so many words. But the state did choose to showcase our national intolerance with a vengeance and right where it mattered in Parliament House. We became the only practicing democracy whose parliamentary records describe cartoons as inappropriate material. The HRD Minister summarily deleted from Class XI textbooks a selection of archival cartoons handpicked by experts. Barring two dissenters, Sharifuddin Sharif of the National Conference and Jaswant Singh of the

Earlier this year I was invited to attend a rather high-powered literary festival in Chennai. The invitee list was studded with authors, chefs, editors, actors, TV anchors, politicians, fashion designers and other such luminaries that currently form India's public intellectual milieu. I was utterly flattered by this invitation, of course. I'd written a few, reasonably well-received novels over the years. But I am, to put it mildly, no Jeet Thayil. And no Wendell Rodricks. And the differences between Shriya Saran and me are too numerous to count. So I went with great enthusiasm. Literary festivals are one of society's chief ways of rewarding its authors. Given that most of us make so little money, the occasional junket in a five star hotel with the odd open bar and the rare autograph-hunting fan is most gratifying. A little royalty to make up for very little royalty, if you will. Once there, I kept running into attendees who introduced themselves and then said the same thing over and over again: "I love your tweets!"

Sidin Vadukut Sidin Vadukut is a humorous tweeter and blogger who also happens to be the Managing Editor of livemint.com.

Not my books. Not my blog posts. Not my office culture work. Not even my cricket columns. But my tweets. This, it increasingly became obvious to me, was the art form that I was being identified with the most. This the briefest, most insubstantial of all the things that I write. This tweeting had become my literary raison d'tre. I was both amused and petrified at the same time. Petrified because I had no intention of becoming "that guy who tweets funny things". I was, on the contrary, hoping to become "that guy who tweets funny things and won the Booker".

I've been tweeting mostly jokes since May 2007. To date I've posted approximately 63,000 tweets. Which means that I tweet nearly 30 times each day, or around twice every waking hour. At the time of writing this piece, each of my tweets had been read by 54,988 followers. And despite all my protestations to the contrary with friends, family and colleagues, I do take my tweeting very seriously. I check my timeline every morning and glean most of my news from this social network. Almost all the new friends I've made in the last three years, I've made via Twitter. Am I an addict? Almost. (I use a piece of software called Anti-Social to suppress all social networks on my computer if I am working on writing projects.) However, the single biggest impact Twitter has had in my daily life is in the way I process my tendency to make jokes. I make a lot of jokes. I don't say this to boast, but simply to state a fact. I don't make jokes consciously, obsessively, or with particularly consistent results. But I do it all the time. It is as if one part of my mind is constantly processing the humorous implications of every single firing neuron in my brain. A few years ago my first impulse on creating a joke of any merit was to email

it to my wife and a very close circle of friends. Most of them would ignore it, and rightly so. Blogging changed this somewhat; Twitter, later, changed this completely. My blog was the first place where I began to sacrifice the privacy of many of my jokes. I didnt hesitate to post jokes and anecdotes about my inability to drive, my problem with hair on my back, or having relatives who pride themselves on being able to pilfer any object that is not bolted down in an Air India flight. These were not the kinds of jokes I'd be sharing with strangers in a cafe or even at a party. These were, in the general scheme of things, private jokes I'd usually only share with my closest friends. Yet there is something about the digital remoteness and anonymity of a blog that makes these jokes 'alright'. Since the blog distanced you from the audience who read them and from their reactions judgemental or otherwise you somehow didn't feel awkward discussing your hairy back at all. Twitter took the comforting, insulating distance of the blog and raised it to an entirely new level. And it made sharing all the more easier. These days, whenever I tell my wife a joke, she always seems to know what I am going to do next: "You're going to tweet it, aren't you?" Sometimes, I don't even have to enunciate my mirthful masterpiece; she can tell from that look in my eyes that I've thought of

Twitter took the comforting, insulating distance of the blog and raised it to an entirely new level. And it made sharing all the more easier.

something private that must go public. Why is this so? What has made the private joke so public? I suspect it has something to do with the odd sense of personal boundaries that the internet bestows, nay forces, upon its users. Thanks to a multitude of communication platforms we converse without meeting, meet without talking, talk without listening, and listen without even meaning to. This takes the traditional, dual-mode nature of communication as something that is either private or public and makes it much more complicated. Is a tweet public? Or *wink nudge wink-RTs are not endorsements* private? Is a Facebook update public? Or private? Who knows? What does privacy even mean anywhere? Or is something private as long as the communication doesn't happen face to face? Unfortunately jokes, unlike electrons, don't exist in quantum states. The private joke is private only the first time you tell it. After that somebody you, your wife, your friend is going to post it on some social network somewhere. The public then takes over.

Amused because wisecracks, one-liners and puns were still alive and well and entertaining enough to create a personal brand.

Letting Satire Grow Up

Humour in Indian cinema has, with a few exceptions, hovered in the realm of slapstick and buffoonery. In this scenario, does satire stand a chance of making it to the mass appeal circuit?

In the recent Bollywood film Matru ki Bijlee ka Mandola, Pankaj Kapoor plays a rural landlord who wants to monetise his land bank. He dreams of malls and factories on his property and connives with a corrupt politician to sell it all off. In the evenings, however, he drinks, transforms into a social activist, and in a nice twist leads protests against himself. The films plot is inspired by todays dominant headlines and it features all the familiar characters of the modern Indian landscape, beginning with venal politicians and greedy landowners. Matru, regardless of how it fared in the box office, is a good example of satire in Hindi cinema. While there is no dearth of humour in our films, satire is altogether a rare phenomenon. In satire, instead of making the point loudly and obviously, the filmmaker makes tangential and allegorical references to issues and personalities and there is a complicit arrangement between the director and the audience. Things are not spelled out openly. Instead, the story unfolds in a nudge-nudge-wink-wink pattern that the audience either gets or doesnt. Way back in the 1950s, Guru Dutt made Mr. and Mrs.55, a love story featuring an

indigent artist (Dutt) and a rich, spoilt girl (Madhubala). The girls aunt (Lalita Pawar) is a feminist who does not believe in marriage but, in order to satisfy the terms of a will left by the girls father, has to get her married. She chooses Dutt for a contracted, short-term marriage and pays him a hefty fee for his part. The inevitable happens when the two young people fall in love and have to contend with being released from their convenience marriage. The movie was a pathbreaker at the time for the clever subtlety with which it satirised the upper classes of post-independence India. Lalita Pawar, as the stern and humourless Seeta Devi, was lampooned in a sly way as a typical social reformer and even Madhubala was depicted as the beautiful and nave heiress who is little more than a social butterfly. The dialogues crackled

In satire, instead of making the point loudly and obviously, the filmmaker makes tangential and allegorical references to issues and personalities and there is a complicit arrangement between the director and the audience.

with clever humour Are you a communist? asks Seeta Devi when she visits the artist in his humble accommodation. No, I am a cartoonist, he deadpans. In the 1970s, during the height of the Emergency, Amrit Nahata made Kissa Kursi Ka, a spoof about politicians and their hunger for power. The government banned it and seized all prints of the film. By all accounts, it was not a great film (a new version was made after the Emergency was lifted), but at least someone had tried to tackle the subject in a humorous way. There are other movies that can be viewed as successful examples of this film genre, however. Peepli Live, with its satirisation of media and political responses to farmer suicides, is among them. The mother of all satirical films is, of course, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, which

Sidharth Bhatia Sidharth Bhatia has been a journalist for more than three decades and is a regular commentator on current affairs, society and culture. His book, Cinema Modern, was published in November 2011.

brilliantly skewered the corrupt ways of businessmen, bureaucrats and the media. The manipulation of contracts, the shoddy workmanship of infrastructure, and the games that editors play, all came in for sharp but humorous comment. Never before or after has a film, that so cleverly and wittily exposed the seamy underside of our society, been made. Why do Indian filmmakers stay away from satire? Are they scared of causing offence? Or is it just a commercial decision? Or, and this is worth considering, is there just a lack of irony in our system? The typical Hindi film is like a thali, with all kinds of flavours thrown in. There is emotion, melodrama, humour, action, conflict and much else in the three hour buffet that the director presents to his audience. His aim is to satisfy every need. He doesnt want to alienate anyone. The more people that see his film, the better it will do commercially. It is not as if genre films comedies, tragedies, action are not made, but the large majority of films are masala confections with something in them for everyone. Humour in Hindi cinema tends to be broad the jokes are loud and often crass. Buffonery and slapstick are the norm as evidenced in the Golmaal series of films where four friends indulge in all manner of antics to evoke laughter. The idea is to appeal to the lowest common denominator, because that is where the numbers lie.

Mature societies have the ability to absorb satire on any subject, including religion. Nothing is out of bounds. We, on the other hand, have many no-go areas that naturally constrict the artist and the filmmaker. Why take the risk of being banned?

The Less Scripted Route in Communication

Companies today shy away from humour in standard business communication because they are unsure of how it will be received. But it is possible to lighten up and still retain control of the narrative.

But it is also worth considering whether we, as a nation, are ill-equipped to handle satire. Given how everything seems to offend someone or the other and a quick demand is made to ban this or that, who would want to take any chances? We have now reached a stage where any joke about a group can set off a controversy and the moment an objection is raised, the state is all to eager to clamp down on the source of offence whether it be a film, a book, or a work of art. The very basis of satire is to take digs and to poke fun. It will hurt, at some level. Mature societies have the ability to absorb satire on any subject, including religion. Nothing is out of bounds.We, on the other hand, have many no-go areas that naturally constrict the artist and the filmmaker. Why take the risk of being banned? In these circumstances, it is safe to say that satire will remain a tiny niche in Hindi cinema and we will be poorer for it.

Sandhya Thukaram Sandhya Thukaram is a Principal at The PRactice who also oversees the organisations strategic business planning and internal communications.

Does Corporate Communication have a soul? I asked this question two months into my career in Public Relations. Isnt the whole point of communication to connect? Why then are Corporate Communicators so afraid to lighten up, to be self-deprecating, or even say something that is beyond a dry script. I find it even more baffling that we, in India, with a history of cultural wit where even our Gods (think Ganesha) havent shied away from a sense of humour have largely settled for a humourless existence in our Corporate world. Its almost as if we are afraid that we wont be taken seriously, if we should happen to communicate a smile! If I no longer had a sense of humour, I would long ago have committed suicide. So said someone who fashioned an independent India, long before Corporate India became the entity it is today. Mahatma Gandhi had a definitive sense of humour and was unafraid to state his opinion, with candour and wit. When asked if he wasnt embarrassed to meet King George V so scantily dressed, Gandhi, tongue firmly in cheek, replied

that the King had on enough for both of them. And that is the thing. Humour in communication requires honesty, transparency and a fair amount of courage. The more serious our communication as corporations get, the greater the degradation of ethical corporate behavior there appears to be. Of course, it would be simplistic to say that the two are directly linked but it isnt entirely farcical either. A recent TEDx event showcased some amazing entrepreneurs and their even more amazing ideas from a pathbreaking water wheel helping rural women in their daily life to a funky gadget to counter colour blindness.

Humour in communication requires honesty, transparency and a fair amount of courage.

handled by a team of professionals, he would have been advised to tone down his rhetoric and to use politically correct language all with the intention of positioning him as a serious businessman in the same space as larger multi-national corporations. It would have been a disaster both for him and his business. Humour in communication has the ability to create longevity and relevance. Amul is a classic case in point. Without the humour behind the strong and topical message, its hard to imagine that the advertisements would have become so iconic. We dont see enough of that in corporate communication. We will, as communicators, only come into our own when we free ourselves of rigid constraints and embrace wit and humour. Standard corporate communication is often un-engaging with a focus on getting content out there but with more of a push than a pull effect. Some of the best business heads close business deals because they are liked as people. The punch line definitely has an impact on the bottom line. B2B communication can also benefit greatly if communicators remember that people relate to stories more than they do to dry facts, and that business, at the end of the day, is about people.

Standard corporate communication is often un-engaging with a focus on getting content out there but with more of a push than a pull effect.

natural wit in communication, he has earned recognition and respect for his invention a cost effective sanitary napkin making unit. I absolutely believe, that if he hadnt used humour to engage people about a product related to a womans cycle, he wouldnt have been nearly as successful.

tors questions what we hope to achieve through communication rather than what is expected from a corporate communicator, I have no doubt that humour will find a place in communication. We can take a leaf or two from the unsophisticated honesty that exists in grassroots communication which never fails to connect and bring a smile. I try never to get so caught up in the world of serious communication that I fail to appreciate the simplicity, earnestness and grounded humour of a small tailoring unit whose tagline read - God Made Man,We Make Him A Gentleman!

Amongst all of these people and ideas, one man got a standing ovation Muruganandam of Pappanaiackenpalayam. Through his use of earthy and

Beyond his funny village man persona is a smart business brain and an idea that is creating immense social impact. I have no doubt if his communication had been

One can get into pedantic mode and offer solutions to force-fit corporate communications with humour but the result would be contrived and flat. Instead, if each of us as communica-

If you cant change it, laugh about it. That seems to be the mantra of the average person on the street as he grapples with the myriad challenges of daily life. The support groups that form as a result are sometimes normal and, at other times, decidedly oddball.

the bigger canvas of life itself, the aam jantas reality is a series of compromises and adjustments. The rallying cry of the Indian public is Chalta hai or its close cousin, Please adjust. In fact, there is a little linguistic formula that you can use across India. String together these three words: the local word for little + adjust + local word for do and you will get a phrase that is familiar to any Indian anywhere in the country Solpa adjust madi (Kannada), Konjam adjust pannu (Tamil), Thoda adjust karo (Hindi).

It works wonders everywhere. The formula. As well as the attitude. The adjustment whether it is squeezing into a crowded train or squeezing the most out of the monthly budget is borne with a shrug and a weary smile. It usually helps that there are enough co-sufferers around to take the bite out of the situation. A misery shared, of course, is a misery halved. And a misery that can be laughed at, along with someone else? Well, theres no fraction for that.

The Armour of Humour

A very depressed young man, who feels that everything in his life is going wrong, goes to a palmist. The palmist inspects the lines on his palm very closely, shakes his head sadly and says, You will suffer and have a really bad time until you turn 40 years old. The young man is crestfallen, but then looks up hopefully and asks, Will it get better after I turn 40? The palmist replies, Not really. But youll get used to it, and it wont matter so much any more. This story sums up the attitude of many Indians in the face of daily struggles a carefully calibrated mix of fatalism and humour. The joke, the wry comment, the sarcastic one-liner there is no shortage of these little spoonfuls of sugar to help the bitter pill of reality go down. Fate has dealt the average Indian a hand that is heavy with discomfort and disappointments. From the everyday to

While political shenanigans may form the most common fodder for the wit next door, there is almost no occasion or news event that cannot be milked for a chuckle.

and broad-brush comedy. And in most cases, they are able to do it without fear of repercussion since the humour effectively insulates them from the wrath of the powers that be. Today, those in positions of petty power are often at the receiving end of a disproportionate number of barbs. Employees in government offices, traffic policemen, bank employees the list goes on. But in many of these cases, the barb does not really find its way to the intended recipient. Which brings out another aspect of Indian humour the wish-Icould-say-that-aloud joke. These stay in the joke tellers mind and while he or she might be guffawing internally at the witticism, you would never suspect it from the poker face on display. The price of expressing what they are really thinking in such a situation is too high. And Indians are nothing if not pragmatic. They know that there will always be a lot more time and a more receptive audience when they leave the paan-stained premises. Apart from all this, to add a dash of zaniness to the situation, there is that strange tribe of people who do not need anything funny to smile. In fact, they do not stop at smiling. They guffaw, they convulse, they chortle and whoop and howl and roar. All over nothing. Just for the cathartic experience of laughing out loud, and, perhaps, for the facial workout it offers. Laughter clubs have been springing up all over India for some time now. And the funny thing is, the sight of a group of

people standing around in public and laughing their heads off for no apparent reason does not merit a second glance in India. Except from the occasional passerby who wonders if they are cracking up or they have just finally cracked. In India, the line between what is purely funny and what is funny in an idiosyncratically Indian way is sometimes blurred and, at other times, non-existent. Phrases like it happens only here and we are like this only illustrate the national tolerance for nuisance and hassles.

As someone once said, You can cry about it. Or see the absurdity of it all and laugh it off. If you decide to laugh, there will probably be a lot more people joining you. And youll realize that laughter is not just the best medicine. It is, very often, also the best defence.

While political shenanigans may form the most common fodder for the wit next door, there is almost no occasion or news event that cannot be milked for a chuckle. A lackluster performance by the Indian cricket team may trigger the observation that the only time a team member can add runs on the scoreboard is when he is bowling. A ride in a jam-packed Mumbai train is alleviated with comments like, Just think, people pay to be sandwiched like this in Thailand. And the lampooning of celebrities the rich and famous? Well, that could be declared the real national sport. The tradition of using laughter as a lubricant to slip unpleasant truths across is not new. Folk theatre and art forms of India have always used humour, both as a carrot to lure the masses to the performance as well as a stick to beat up the social ills of the day. Folk art forms have a tradition of being more ribald and earthy than most mainstream entertainment. Here, the comic actors function as social auditors who highlight the problems people face through satire

In India, the line between what is purely funny and what is funny in an idiosyncratically Indian way is sometimes blurred and, at other times, non-existent.