Ten thousand visits!

Even as I write, the visits-counter has turned over, and I have crossed the 10,000 visits milestone. It has taken me 15 months: much faster than it happened with the other blog. Gives me a good feeling, knowing how hard it is to keep at this sort of thing for weeks and months on end in the midst of a busy (and not too funny) work schedule, with very little help – as I observed in an earlier post. Add to that frequent niggling irritations, like anonymous mugs and complete strangers chipping in just to say they don’t like the contents of this blog (and without making the slightest effort to show me how to do better – as by writing and maintaining a blog of their own)!

Indians are not known for their humour. I keep telling my girls and boys that they exhaust all their sense of fun by giggling so much over inanities and trifles all through teenage that by the time they are adults, they are surly grumblers all, or else they laugh only over obscenities, or over others’ misfortunes. Sit in on any office conversation or party gossip or roadside adda of college dropouts. I may not have a very exalted sense of humour, but I pride myself that I have never needed to stoop to such baseness.

One thing that a lot of people don’t know is that appreciating humour requires a) high IQ, b) wide GK, and c) often also a much better grasp of language than most people can boast of. There’s nothing more painful than watching a joke fall flat simply because the audience has no clue as to what you are talking about. Reminds me of the Bengali adage that a fool always laughs three times over a joke: the first time because he sees others laughing, the second time because the humour strikes him at last, and the third time realizing that he had laughed the first time without understanding…

It is not easy to be whimsical, especially in troubled times. I have met very few people in flesh and blood who can do that. So I am compelled to fall back on quoting the wise-saws of the great and the good, such as when Sir Winston Churchill scathingly put down his garrulous opponent in Parliament by saying ‘The honourable member is modest, and he has much to be modest about’, and when President Lincoln, on hearing about the drinking problem of his brilliant general Ulysses Grant, said ‘Find out what he drinks, and I am going to send a barrel to each of my other generals’, and the incident in the comic book Asterix the Legionary, where the eponymous hero tells friend Obelix to swallow the disgusting-looking mash they serve in the army, saying ‘The worse the food, the stronger the army’, then spitting out a mouthful himself, and commenting with a grimace ‘I didn’t know the Roman army was that strong!’

A good wish to all my followers. Do send in a few words of encouragement now and then…