I like crass jokes and I cannot lie

Exploring vulgarity

Back in 2005, I joined the retail industry when there were only a handful of malls and multiplexes in the country. The Chief Manager of the property I worked at was one Mr M who had migrated back to India after having worked in Canada for some years. He was predictably proper mannered in every sense – always clean shaved, always spoke in a soft measured tone and never rolled his sleeves back even in peak Mumbai summers.

In a rare candid moment, he told me about the carnival back in Canada (probably this one in Toronto). ‘All through the year’, he said, ‘we strictly followed every rule in the book. But on those 3 days of the carnival, we let ourselves go!’. He got animated as he spoke about how the entire city would shut down and join in a wild celebration. ‘It was one big street party with no restrictions whatsoever!’

And once the carnival was over, the city would miraculously resume to its usual orderly ways.

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Mr M’s story of that carnival gave me a new lens to look at Mumbai’s biggest street party – the Ganapati festival.

Every year, for those eleven days, office-goers like me would get fed up with the traffic situation going from the already-bad to a much-more-worse. Traffic rules are bent and routes get redrawn to ensure that the Ganesha idols - small and big - get a green signal wherever they go.

With the new lens, I could see that this festival is the time of the year that the working class steps outside en masse and claims their space in the megapolis. Men, women and children dance their hearts out as thousands of processions make their way through the congested city streets. It is the same streets where they sweat it out every day to earn a living but they never get to claim it as their own. The foot soldiers of the city will always have to step aside and make way for a car rushing through.

I could now see why the processions are loud and pulsating - and why not! An eruption of repressed emotions that were finding an outlet for eleven days of the year.

Even the convoys of political leaders and the SUVs of movie stars have to stop and wait when a procession is passing through.

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In Kodagu district of Karnataka, tribal communities celebrate 'Kunde Habba' once a year. 'Kunde Habba' literally translates to ‘Ass Festival’ and it is meant to be just that - an oppressed people showing their behinds to mock their gods who abandoned them and the landlords who exploit them. Boys and men wear face paint, wear wigs, masks and cross-dress freely. They sing songs filled with insults and dance without a care!

'By dismantling the unequal power equations between themselves and their gods, and between themselves and their employers, and by speaking across this divide in words and tones otherwise disallowed, the tribals access, however momentarily, a state of utopian freedom and social equality.'¹

Is the person in a position of power using abusive language against the powerless? Or is it the powerless who are taking the crutch of strong language to express themselves?

The context gives meaning to profanity.

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If you have grown up in India during the 80s and 90s and happen to visit a college campus in recent years, you would have seen that the college runs very much like any other school. Students get picked up by a bus, they have to wear uniforms, they step outside classrooms only during lunch breaks and there is enough surveillance to ensure that no one is loitering aimlessly. There is no semblance of free expression or any democratic processes in decision-making. And showing any form of dissent is simply out of syllabus!

For this generation, hobbies must amount to something on a CV. And volunteering for a cause is useful to embellish the covering letter to a foreign university.

On the one side, there are the elders pushing Indian culture on to them, and on the other side are the social media influencers promoting a woke culture.

It is not surprising why the young chose Samay Raina and his show 'India's got Latent' - where everyone took great pleasure in pulling the pants off hallowed institutions like families, schools and corporates.

For centuries, performers have employed humour to say what cannot be said otherwise. The court jester, the clown and the buffoon would wear outrageous costumes and utter unspeakable words to expose the king, the court and the society. The powerful usually left them alone because going after them would only end up validating their ‘silly’ words.

‘India's Got Latent’ had no such lofty ideals. They were all just being crass for the joy of being crass!

The irony is that the showrunners maintained a safe distance from politics. They avoided jokes about the government, a political party or any ideology.

And yet, the Indian state - that is already stretched beyond its capacity on all sides - is going after a comedy show because those in power got disgusted by a joke. It is also going after comedians who did not use hateful language, did not instigate violence between groups and their jokes did not lead to anyone destroying property – public or private.²

The state is expending valuable resources to preserve something as esoteric as 'Indian values' while not showing half the seriousness in tackling issues that can actually improve its citizens' lives.

Like it has happened many times before, by going after the buffoon, the state has only ended up exposing itself.

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In a clip that has since gone viral, legendary screenwriter Javed Akhtar shares why using gaali (abusive language) in humour is not a refined art form.

As always, Javed Saab comes up with a gorgeous analogy. The haves will use the choicest of spices to infuse flavour into their dishes while the have-nots will take a bite of the humble chilly to satisfy their palate.

However,

just like it is unfair for us to judge his lead characters from the 1970s for choosing violence as a means to redemption, it won’t be fair for us to tell today’s comedians to choose a different way to make us laugh.

The opposite of free expression is either conformity or silence.

And my vote is always with free expression in whatever form it takes.

And like Javed Saab, I am sure that Samay and co. will also collect enough spices from lived experiences and reading books, and that years from now, they won’t need just chillis to add zing to their dishes.

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The other day, my friend asked, 'Oh, I always speak my mind, so why don't you?'

'Good for you!' I said with contempt I could not hide. Most of us have grown up in restrictive environments holding ourselves back in fear of being reprimanded or getting mocked at. So, it is natural that we feel a vicarious joy in watching people on shows like ‘India’s Got Latent’ saying and doing whatever they wish to! Even when the jokes aren't great, the glory is in the act of going on stage and performing it.

I miss not having any more episodes to look forward to.

So long and thanks for all the craaazy!

1. https://artreview.com/the-ass-festival-kunde-habba-kogadu-opinion-deepa-bhasthi/

2. The rise and rise of hate speech in India: