Day 36 - 10 Ka Dum

I believe that most awkward situations in life can be sorted out with a little sense of humor. Humor has been an integral part of our Indian Cinema and our audiences love humor. All great comedians in our cinema have come from poverty…Johnny Walker was a bus conductor; Mehmood saab belonged to a family of talented but very poor people… Johnny Lever worked at a factory…even our Rajpal Yadav comes from a lower middle class family from Saharanpur, U.P. It’s a fact that poor and middle class people have a greater sense of appreciation of humor than the rich and successful people.

Perhaps it is the helpless situations in life of the common people that gives them their sense of humor that in return helps them fight the unequal war of survival… They learn to laugh off hardship and difficulties. But like people, there are various types of humor...Some have a lot of malice. For them humor is just a façade to express their bitterness. Real humor never causes harm to anyone. Some people say bitter things and then offer excuses that it was said it in humor...as a joke!
Cowards always manage to find covers, masks and facades…

Black humor is a familiar concept in the West and some real funny films have been made around the situations of death and funerals. For us however, it’s an alien concept and Indian audiences do not like it much but Kundan Shah did make very funny film – “jaane bhi do yaaron”… Our own Kishore Kumar had a terrific sense of humor. Charlie Chaplin immortalized the mime in the silent era. He was truly a genius and has been copied the most all over the world yet none reached his sublimity and height. I think it’s easier to make audiences cry than make them laugh. Comedy is serious business. A very serious filmmaker like Gurudutt always had some humorous scenes in his profound cinema.

I believe humor with malice towards none is as essential as oxygen!