Held together by haha

Charles arrived in America, on a mission to repair his island nation’s relationship with King D, somewhat inauspiciously. A man with a gun had gotten close enough to Donald, to raise fears of a JFK fate.

But Old Bean has carried with him nicely crafted speeches, punctuated by some Dickens and some Oscar Wilde. So, he didn’t just make the US Congress laugh. He made divided Congress laugh together – this is roughly equivalent to getting cats and dogs to share a water bowl. Alternatively, the whole thing evoked A Tale of Two Charleses: One made a fortune describing the interior of workhouses, the other inherited a fortune ensuring he never has to see the interior of a kitchen. Overall takeaway is that a walking punchline can still land a big laugh.

It’s especially engaging to watch a man who’s a joke, laugh at himself. On this front, Brits are really great. As their empire shrinks to a pond, they can still put the kettle on, and jest about having reached the age where their back goes out more than they do. A worldly upside to self-deprecating humour is that it’s very hard to loathe a man who just made you snort.

As for us Indians, our relationship with humour is like our traffic –chaotic, occasionally dangerous, but mostly reaching the destination in one piece. What’s special is that we are simultaneously one of the most hierarchical societies on earth, and one of the most irreverent. We touch elders’ feet, and do devastating impressions of them the moment they leave the room.

We address bosses as “sir” with the gravity of a Supreme Court petition, then spend the shared auto ride home doing a full character breakdown of everything wrong with them. But people who forward savage WhatsApp jokes at midnight, can still file hurt-sentiment cases by morning. For them, being confident in your ‘culture’ means an FIR about a stand-up set.

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