My Favourite Three Humourists

I am not talking Stand-up Comedy on current affairs who work as overworked social media propagandist and throw in a couple of cuss words and that is not humor for me. I am talking about supreme quality, a balanced, and a wonderful representation of a situation that brings out that human smile even when the person is super serious. That gentle smile is the one I am talking about in the word Humor.

One of the best things in my life was my English classes at my school. I woke up to studies only in my 5^th grade when I began reading books on my own. Of course, it is a different thing that my 7.5 had just passed by and happier days were etched in the Indian natal chart. Somewhere there, I believe my sense of what is now my maturing humor’s birth lies.

Honestly, there is such great capability of being able to appreciate literature and love the way it goes into the spaces of the mind. I believe Humor is possible only when there is a great in-depth knowledge of the world and its natural ways.

That way there are specific essays by some people that I really love to reread as many times as I can. There are three writers’ whose works I absolutely love to read over and again. The three of them are

Charles Lamb
GK Chesterton
PG Wodehouse

All three of them are my super favourites and in their style of saying things has been my aspiration all my life. I still don’t sound good or even remotely fair. I am still a struggling artist who is grappling with her tools. I don’t have in depth relationship knowledge since all my time is spent with books and stories. I know the theories of it but then, I sadly am missing on the practical parts. So, I feel that humor is experienced from within and there is no huge laughter, maybe sometimes, but usually it is a gentle nudge of pleasant feeling that brings out the small smile.

Then humorous writing that can be one man’s nourishment while becoming one man’s punishment. I love big vocabulary writers and in that PG Wodehouse is such a wonder pot of a fascinating language workshop.

Humor has its own specific logical order since it permeates throughout my thinking process, I believe to master it requires a mentor who you can really rely on to be an honest feedback provider. Because of the fact that my humor is sometimes very dark but at the same time, I know that I like lighter wordplays too.

Jeeves who is a gentleman’s gentleman is such an exemplary English Butler that I am so thrilled to just read the novels of PG Wodehouse on the Jeeves series and those of Blandings Castle series. Somehow it never felt that I was reading another culture. The important thing that is required is to be really crisp and to the point. If you amble in the narrative of humor then, the punchline is long past miss punched.

One of my secret desires as a writer is to be a humorist on the above three writers’ cadre. Charles Lamb’s essay The Dissertation on a Roasted Pig is one of the best and I fall in love each time I read it. The way he describes the pig and the pig roasting history is such a pleasure and treat to even a staunch vegetarian like me. The inference was funnier because it has some amount of sadness attached to it.

Now that I call humor since it brings out the human aspect of a person. Humor also speaks for the quality of life of the people and society at large. That way I believe G K Chesterton is another favourite of mine. His political essays are more commentary on the social lifestyle structures found in the various people and their behaviour that GKC observed. The most important thing that I need to understand as someone who is just learning to write, is that when you aspire to be a humorist then it becomes important that you place yourself in the human situation and not balk from it.

That way my experience in life is limited, and I need to open up to my community that is there in my flat that I live and maybe make new friends, both the art of friendship-making is pretty much a Herculean task for me. But one can assume that one has understood the situation and work out the relationship. The art of bonding in humor takes synching in humor.

Sometimes I connect with people’s humor, and sometimes I don’t since it was out of my signal range. No neural network connectivity simply didn’t support that mismatch of software and hardware. Then it becomes all the more important that the command on the language become very stringent so that the humor comes out naturally instead of being forced.

My aspiration is still alive even today when I read humorous piece of creative fiction or creative non-fiction. For instance, the humor that I have grown up with is wordplay and slanderous potty jokes that grannies just enjoy saying. They are so familiar that the sentence is not even completed, and the listener immediately gets it.

If I should dare say that I may have to labour with love on my humor and then I say Love’s labour is lost and found.

Image Source: Pexels.com

Outcasted Life in Colors of Social Inequalities

Book Title: Two Leaves and A Bud

Author: Mulk Raj Anand

Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars

Get Your Copy: Amazon

A Bird’s Eye View

About the Storyteller:

Mulk Raj Anand’s style of writing sets the reader to think deeply and it also evokes a reaction from the reader. I read this book as part of my Indian Writing in English course, in the second year of my BA (English Literature). It is a fact that English Writers of Indian origin spoke of highly serious topics such as caste and social discrimination. Or it could be that the choice of Writers were the ardent freedom struggle activists. Some Writers used humour while some believed in holding the note of deep contemplation in place during the course of their narratives about the British rule in India.

It was almost like Gangu’s the protagonist and his family’s troubles were never ending and the way out of the situation does not seem available anywhere. In that way, the plot’s moment of happiness was also colored by the protagonist’s non-achievable delusion of future happiness. While reading Anand’s work, I felt it, that it was a rather overload of sadness which kept lining the story from start to finish. It was never dropped even during those small happy moments in the life of the major characters. In this Anand reminded me of Charles Dicken’s writing keeps making things harder, especially to find even a moment of joy in any described situations in story.

The Story in a Nutshell

A Farmer of Amritsar who has lost his land to the moneylenders is forced to move out of his familiar hometown to an unfamiliar state in Assam where he struggles in the pathetic condition to just live one day after another with his family being safe. What happens to his family and to him in the new place and how the contractor just painted a life of prosperity which turned to nothing but a mirage of horror.

Review

My Likes and Dislikes

I liked the intensity with which Anand wrote this story. There is no rest from the constant feeling of desperation and desire that something good would happen makes a refrain in the mind’s of the reader; but then, there were no breaks. The strength of a human’s mindset of hope that keeps ebbing and flowing through our being is reflected in Gangu and his family too. But eventually, reality strikes and everything is just darkness. I also liked the flow of words when I read it and it felt like I was living in the British rule era.

What I disliked was the few characters major evil ones, but they were the plot progressing villains who were the catalyst to moving ahead of the story. But I think if you can make some character to be hated by the reader, then the readers are invested in your story and the protagonist.

That way, this book had a lot of interesting paragraphs where the author’s ability to describe the scene and emotions of the characters comes out very well. This novel was very sad and at the end of it, you are happy because it was a definite tragedy and it is a little over the top with injustice hanging on the hinges. But then, it kind of opens up the mind’s eye towards what could possibly be the reason for the existence of such discrimination and why is that the fellow human beings do not have the basic rights in their life and working condition.

The human’s rights are violated in the working condition of the plantation at every given point. This leaves a sense of constant injustice which becomes a given fact of the contracted workers’ life. That sense of injustice and inequality really gets to you when you read this novel.

My Opinion

The fact that I had to read this novel as a compulsory novel of the Indian Writing in English paper, I felt a sense of dark brooding when I read it. I don’t pick books which are unhappy, but then being socially aware is also part of the deal to read up books that are written with sadness in it.

I do want to read up literary works of Indian Writers, but their grammar is so hard and that of the Wren and Martin variety. But then you have rare thoughts of progress and advancement from these Writers which moves one’s sense of right. But I was someone who enjoyed styles of varied kind. If I read for a specific time a specific style, then, I tend to be able to pick it up.

Like for instance, there was a time, when I kept reading Shakespeare’s plays and landed up being able to read like natural English. I side poetry more than prose. Anand’s prose was one such pleasure to read, but the subject left me depressed and a little disappointed about the inequalities in a society of that time.

The people who live in the delusion that all is well and continue life in stupor, sometimes need to get their jolt in novels such as these. The novel brings out the oppression in plain statements and in turn showing this mirror of society the reader is not given any space to escape. I believe if the book does that to you, then you are reading an exceptional writer’s work.

Image Source: Amazon Online

L’sLT Series | Finding Peace In Confusion and Cluelessly Figuring Out

So, a few months back in December 2018 I believe, that all channels were advertising for channel selection and TRAI rules and regulation. I, for my part, was sure cool, I could see it and there was so many an actor explaining it. But for me, I was clueless, I only understood that I had to pick a family pack or Mera walla pack. Guess what do I do, I wait for these guys to call me and ask! Urgh! But no one called and one fine day channels started disappearing. I am in like ‘where are my channels?’ – a questioning mode, while I am looking on clueless as ever?

This led to a fictionalized mixed reality of creative non-fiction which of course I am enjoying writing. I do not have anything against anyone, but just that when procrastination leads to a mess eventually which becomes harmful for the procrastinator. These last-minute rescue decision-making has become a way of life for me, which I am trying to change. But sadly, not even the 48 days or oru manadalam (Ayurvedic time duration of a medicine course) practice seems to be working.

So let us talk about doing the right thing at the right time is the wise thing; while a right action, if delayed then, it is not the right action at all. Most of our life’s situations are time-bound and some require an instant decision, while some can afford to be thought over before arriving at a decision.

So why is taking a quick on the spot decision is so vital? My life is filled with decision taking on a daily basis and it is nothing different or unique about it. But over the years, I have started to learn how to take the decision not just for me but on behalf of others too. There are moments when I want to chew on a decision like a cow’s cud process time, but then time is premium so some decision is taken on the spot.

When you take decision for yourself and if things go wrong despite one’s best efforts, then it is easier to just tell ourselves that we will live with it. But when the decision is on behalf of others, then I become super conscious of the extent of responsibility that lies on my shoulder.

There are moments when I freeze while taking a decision, then it starts the chain of events and choices. The postponing of decision-making has a huge impact on a later date. In my earlier days, I was such a free spirit who never thought again of any decision, made a choice and then move on, was my attitude. Even today, I have that free-spirit surprising me with its presence. There is much that is mysterious in life among them is my logically processing to a decision.

I always keep thinking, that should one take the instincts’ hint or think it through logically and then take a decision? A Egg and Hen question. My twisted logic series is a different track altogether, maybe should be another of this series entry. So, for instance, there are moments when I am completely in swirls of logic because I think in circles and it can be very tiring. I love to keep pondering and if the material I am pondering on is literary then, I am super happy.

For instance, when you need to take a decision on a text, even though I don’t know it that well, it seems easier to decide, but not with live people. But I have improved by far in these many years of experience with collaborating with people. Honestly people are far more fun and you learn with them too. I still feel that taking a decision on behalf of others is very super tricky. But then, if we must, then we must. The rule of my thumb is to make sure it is for the common good for all involved.

Eventually, the act of decision making is sometimes art and sometimes science, but then also an experiential learning that grows the being and the spirit. I wish there were some quotes to give away as I think of all these wonderful things about decision-taking the swamps around my thoughts. Life is about upgrading non-stop and don’t settle quickly.

Image Source: Pexels.com