Funny, writing this or funny writing this???

Things have been in a rut. I have been taking myself too seriously. For the death of me, I am not able to write anything humorous or remotely funny. The worst thing was I started out on a funny post about Anna hazare and halfway through i am playing the devil's advocate (a younger version of Thapar, though) and the discussion turns really serious and fit for late night reruns and shameless replugs by Rajdeep on his twitter feed. Next  I thought I will write about Sunny leone and it was coming across nicely(no pun intended) when suddenly i find myself three paragraphs deep into the discussion of the hard decisions of the morally challenged people find themselves in.(that's a nice alternative to calling them a whore, na...oh damn..the purpose of an alternative is lost now, Dammit). 

With a couple of flops like this, i knew something was wrong at a very fundamental level and i needed to find my humor and find it really fast. I decided to go back in time(imagine a mosquito coil doing the turns now) and see what used to get me going. 

Certain things that have always brought a laugh in me.Remember all these things that I am talking about here are about 10-15 years back and not my current state.

1)  S.V. Sekhar dramas

Much of mine and Peri's ( my best buddy from school) school days were spent listening to S.V.Sekar dramas...we were fanatics...he had a way of taking us away from the troublesome student lives that we lived and transported us to a state of laughter and light-headedness which was beyond our years.. his jokes were mostly clean but amazingly fresh...Oh I remember the battle to get the new audio cassettes and if we are lucky the video cassettes.

a sample of this genius

the following dialogue takes in a rural school in an english language class

" this is an orange...if we squeeze this, what do we get....orange juice

   this is a lemon...if we squeeze this, what do we get...lemon juice

   this is milk....what is it in English...Cow juice"

I revamped the interest and started catching the performances live whenever it comes across in chennai. The jokes are still mostly fresh and he manages to revamp the jokes to make it relevant to current happening things. But the most interesting thing is his spontaneity. Man, I pity the fool who is a part of his crew and make a mistake on stage. Sekhar literally rips them apart on stage with his extempore jokes and watches as they cringe on stage.

An example of his on stage presence of mind.

Sekhar was part of the congress faction but recently he was removed from his post and his basic membership from the party. At the end of the drama, he said the following.

“Antha areavula ethavathu prachnaina sollunga…phone poda balance illati mail anuppunga…ennoda mail id mylapore.mla@gmail.com...satta sabaila irunthu thookinalum google la iruntha thooka mudiathu..ethuva irunthalum email pannunga…naan kooti padichi purinjikittu thiruppi reply panren.”

Kudos.

b) Friends

The second most prominent humor factor in most of the people of my age would be (dont try to guess my age with this..iam very young) the sitcom Friends... who can ever forget the whole gang as they twist and turn from one scenario into another..there were obviously some dreary parts when the romance was squeezed in but for the most part, the humor was fresh, to the point and addictive...and I think the bloody reason for the birth of so many me-toos. Any other channel you switch had some clone like this with some weird combination of this initial mover.

I remember seeing something very similar in one of our tamil channels and that was the day when I stopped the reruns completely.

c) Frasier

oh this guy is all about sophistication and the humor in it was sophisticated too..not run of the mill humor but rather called as the thinking man's humor series..the pompuous Frasier crane, the weedy dr. Niles, the caring and sensuous ( a lethal combination) Daphne and the wisecracking wiseass father Martin

This was possibly the best series that engaged us on a higher level. A similar thing on the same frequency was perhaps Seinfeld although both were very unique in their content.

d) Don camillo

Among the books that i have read ( and i have read many..phew) one series of books that stood out for its humor is the Italian fiction Don Camillo. . . the story of a catholic priest, Don Camillo hounded by his communist mayor, Peppone, adviced to by Christ on the crucifix, and the village of Little People....I still cant put a number to the number of times i would have possibly re-read them...too numerous...the frayed pages of the battered old books hold testimony..

This was never printed during my lifetime and if I am not wrong was perhaps during my dad’s childhood but somehow he managed to get a collection all squared away for me. Turning the pale yellow faded crisp pages and rereading the stories was just amazing. A decade later I have gone hunting around the world(online and in person) for this series and have now almost completed the entire collection at possibly 100 to 200 times the original costing.

But you must read it to understand what I am talking about. So so fresh and just amazing writing by Giovanni. His most famous statement was when he was arrested for treason and was about to shot dead or hanged to die. “ I wont die how many ever time you hang me”

e) My friends

The biggest source of all my laughs. The people around me. My friends. My family. My acquaintances. My colleagues. They are the people who help me in overcoming my troubles and most often they are the troubles themselves. Their ingenuity in creating the most complex scenes often puts sitcom writers to shame. Slapstick isn’t passé either, as quite often proved by the crazy antics of these buggers. Love you guys, but hold back a bit on the pie throwing and the sword swallowing…Healthcare isn’t what it used to be.

Now I am totally recharged as I sit back and think of all these things that have brought a Gubeer sirippu (as RJ Balaji would say it) I sit back and look forward to write more humor(to me, to me…I know, I can hear a few of you shouting, Comedy???)  so that you people can santhoooooooshamai padichufy all that. Be right back.