Writing for fun. Seriously.

 Humerus: The upper arm bone that runs from your shoulder to your elbow. Pronounced like the word humorous. Hence, the elbow area nearby is called the funny bone.

Every now and then, I keep getting asked by friends and by people online I do not know from Adam or Eve, why I don’t comment seriously on the volatile goings-on in our beloved motherland. Or, for that matter, on the perennial Mad Hatter’s Tea Party that is taking place in the Middle East, Iran, Israel, Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere, all masterminded by that maddest Mad Hatter of them all, that Fool on the Hill. It is not that I have never touched upon these issues. When I do, however, I merely inflict a glancing blow at them for a giggle and move on to issues that concern us, me at any rate, on a daily basis. Everyday things, as a friend pointed out. Apart from this, the fact is there are too many distinguished writers from the world of media, politics, bureaucracy, activism and various pressure groups who fill our pages and social media with learned observations on a daily basis. Thus, you have Modi bashers, Rahul Gandhi bashers, Trump bashers and bashers of lesser beings who carve up and occupy the available media space. That being the case, I refuse to go where angels fear to tread. I lack the heft. I may have said this before in a different context, but it bears repeating.

I am posting this on India’s 80th Independence Day. I shall make no more reference to it as all our newspapers are bulging with supplements and reams of articles which no one reads.

When I started my career in advertising several decades ago, I was taught the fundamental concept of brand positioning, the essence of which postulates the theory that you must look for a gap that exists in a product category either in and of itself, or about which claims have not been made by other competing brands. You then latch on to that gap and go to town with it. A marketing pundit in the 1940s named Rosser Reeves famously dubbed it the Unique Selling Proposition. To illustrate the concept in simple terms, all brands of toothpaste could contain a chemical called ‘hexachlorophene,’ but if no other brand has talked about it, you jump in and claim it for your own and shout as loud as you can from the rooftops – The red stripes contain hexachlorophene, thereby firmly shutting the door on any other brand, leaving them lamenting, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ The fact that your average housewife and her hubby haven’t the foggiest what hexachlorophene is, is neither here nor there. I must hasten to add here (before some jumped-up, know-all jackboots me) that hexachlorophene has since been banned by the FDA. I employed the example only to make a point. There are similar examples in other product categories but I have always rather fancied the red stripes. That is an oversimplification in defining brand positioning, but ‘tis enough, ‘twill serve.

Lest you are scratching your collective heads in puzzlement, I am not going barmy, prattling on about toothpaste and brand positioning. What has all this got to do with the price of fish, I hear you ask. Hold your horses. I was merely at pains to explain why I did not elect to join the merry bandwagon of political and social commentators who, in their own mellifluous ways, regale us every single day in print and podcasts with their deep insights and extraordinary powers of articulation to bring us varying points of view on why Modi is not good for Bharat and why Rahul Gandhi could be even worse for Bharat. Not forgetting why Donald Trump can be and is a disaster for the entire universe. I am caught in a cleft stick in which my lack of experience and totally inadequate depth of knowledge precludes me from sticking my oar in. Therefore, when I do mention these worthies, I merely touch upon them ever so lightly and move on to my metier. Which is to try and keep us all in good sprits during these vexed times in which we live. My modus operandi being to talk about ‘everyday things’ like visits to doctors, cars breaking down, crossing swords with tax authorities, running into interesting strangers on a flight, the agony and ecstasy of raising a Cocker Spaniel, ditto of playing the stock markets, straddling between Carnatic music and The Beatles, serendipitous meetings with the great and the good, and so on and so forth. All else failing, I have over seven decades of deposits at the Bank of Nostalgia to draw freely from; with interest.

That said, coming up with something burlesque to write about every week is not a joke. In any case, I am not awfully sold on ‘cracking’ jokes and resorting to overwrought puns and one-liners. I leave that to our stand-ups, who are so much the rage these days. At most, I am happy if I can extract a smile from my reader, and that is no laughing matter either. However, satirical humour brings with it its own dodgy pathway strewn with egg shells on which you need to tip-toe ever so carefully. Unless you happen to be one of those brave hearts who says, ‘I’ll write what I feel like and let the devil take the hindmost.’

 And here’s the funny thing. As an almost completely unknown blogger, beavering away on one’s desktop in the privacy of one’s home, you can indulge in any amount of leg-pulling of the high and mighty without fear of retribution. Prime Ministers, Politicians, Royalty, Booker Prize Winners, Film and Sports Super Stars – bring them on. The more the merrier. They are all fair grist to the lampooner’s mill. Within acceptable limits of decency, of course. If anything, they are being treated far more harshly by commentators of great eminence. At the other end of the spectrum, you have the likes of contemporary British comic and stand-up, Ricky Gervais, who can go verbally and visually full frontal and still manage to stay on the right side of the law. It is a matter of record that our Prime Minister has openly declared that he receives so many ‘gaalis’ every day that he has digested them fully; and presumably hankers for more. He repeats that gag frequently to quell his rivals’ tendency to draw vicarious pleasure from what they believe is his discomfiture. That ‘gaalis’ remark from the PM usually elicits a few laughs from the faithful.

Au contraire, you need to be careful when you take a dig at people you know; friends or acquaintances close and distant. The moment they see something in print or screen which might obliquely be hinting somewhat teasingly or tauntingly at them, they go all cold and distant and do a fair imitation of a plant which bears the biological name Mimosa Pudica, but widely known to all its friends as Touch Me Not. To stay with the plant idiom, even hitherto brash and boisterous acquaintances become, uncharacteristically, shrinking violets. So thin-skinned they are unable to take a gentle barb against themselves, although they won’t bat an eyelid dishing it out to others. They cast that hurt, ‘Et tu, Brute?’ look at you.  It is a cross all writers, professional and amateurs have to bear, but we trundle on regardless. An extreme example of wrath visiting a writer would be the dastardly knife attack on Salman Rushdie in New York in 2022, resulting in the loss of his right eye. The tragic incident gave birth to his book Knife, in which the celebrated author, despite recounting his unbearable pain, is able to convey irony, black humour almost, as he references the Bard’s Hamlet, ‘What a piece of work is a man.’

So yes, it is vitally important to have writers in our midst who constantly analyse the state of the world, objectively critique the politicians who shape our destinies, their strengths and their foibles, harangue and call them to account, who may veer to the left or veer to the right or just stay put at the centre; I am talking about serious scribes who turn their incisive gaze on matters that impact the common citizen – you and me. It is just that I am not of their number. I blithely tinker around on the periphery, observing life as it passes me by and attempt, at times vainly, to tickle that upper arm bone that runs from your shoulder to your elbow – humerus, as the medicos refer to it. Or the funny bone, as we plebians call it. I am reminded of Sue Townsend’s self-effacing quote attributed to her immortal creation Adrian Mole, ‘I always knew I had no small talk, and now I know I’ve got no big talk either.’