“When a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall,” wrote English playwright and actor Alan Bennett. And Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi, Urdu’s foremost humorist today, wrote that had the breeder horses been able to write down their wishes, they would have written exactly what you find on lavatory walls. In my personal opinion, it is indeed a sign of bad taste – and bad toilet manners – to put your thoughts on a lavatory wall, illustrated or otherwise, though the graffiti might sometimes say something really hilarious. But, then, writing it on the lavatory wall is humorous in itself.

What is humour? Many have tried to define humour. But it defies all definitions. Humour, as Arthur Koestler has put it in his ‘The act of creation’, is an elusive thing. But still there is a myriad of definitions of humour, both philosophical and literary. The definition I subscribe to says that humour is anecdotal and consists in “realising the fact that no matter how high the throne one sits on, one sits on one’s bottom’.

Generally, South Asia was considered among the regions of the world that till recent times had had less happiness per square inch on average. And as the gloomy region had little to cheer about, it was believed that it might not have a sense of humour at all. But research has proved that on the contrary South Asia did not only have its fair share of sense of humour but did practise it in its written literature and oral traditions, notwithstanding its colonial past and war tragedies. Nowhere has it been depicted more perfectly than in its literatures that South Asia has great ability to laugh at its miseries and idiosyncrasies. All the major languages of the region have produced humorous literature and some of them, like Urdu, have roots that go back to the 15th century.

The research papers that find and discuss humour in South Asian literatures have been collected in a well-produced volume ‘Of clowns and gods, Brahmans and babus’. The papers, presented at a seminar organised at South Asia Institute of the University of Heidelberg, titled ‘Sense of humour in South Asian literatures’, have been collected and edited by Christina Oesterheld and Claus Peter Zoller. Both editors have written two thought-provoking forewords. The first one, written by Dr Zoller, describes and evaluates some interesting theories of humour, some of them being about 2,000 years old, originating from Plato and Aristotle. Some recent ones were conceived by Bergson and Freud. He has sifted through the theories of humour based on epistemological and teleological principles. Some more recent ones, according to him, are linked to specific academic fields, such as linguistics. In his conclusion he says that “it would surely be interesting to investigate to what extent the modern literatures of South Asia have lost all but pedantic satire and entertaining laughter (and to what extent this can be attributed to Western influences), or whether there is still subversive humour which turns the existing order and its norms upside-down.”

Christina Oesterheld has beautifully summed up the papers contributed, analysing them against the backdrop of the theories of humour. She has also given the gist of all the papers along with their social and political milieu, thereby enhancing their value and depth. This volume, in her own words, ‘covers a wide area from Garhwal in the north to Tamil Nadu and Karnatak in the south, from the Punjab and Rajasthan in the west to Bengal and Mithila in the east. Generally, the stress is more on the description and analysis of texts from an essentialist and/or teleological perspective than on theoretical aspects’.

She is of the view that these ‘papers are the result of taking stock of South Asian texts from the perspective of humour for the first time. With the exception of the Tamil jokes studied by G. Eichinger Ferro-Luzzi, all of them have one characteristic in common: they deal with material that has not been explored so far in humour research. These empirical studies of South Asian texts should therefore be viewed as a first step towards a theoretical analysis of humour in South Asia.’

Here I beg to differ slightly. I would like to restrict my humble submissions to humour in Urdu literature as I do not know much about humour in other South Asian languages, though I do not claim to know much about Urdu humour either. But I have been a humble student of Urdu humour and the topic interests me much. First, not all of the material presented takes the stock of South Asian texts from the perspective of the humour ‘for the first time’: The volume contains two papers on Urdu humour, one titled ‘Iqbal inspired humour: A note on parodies by selected Urdu poets’ is written by Prof Fateh Muhammad Malik. This paper indeed explores some new frontiers and some of the arguments are quite fresh and have been discussed for the first time. (For want of space I am not going to pinpoint those sections of Prof Malik’s paper, though it would be worth it). But the other paper on Urdu humour written by Sadiq-ur-Rahman Kidvai, titled ‘Poet who laughed in pain: Akbar Allahabadi’, hardly says anything new and the topic has been thrashed by many, including Dr Khwaja Muhammad Zakaria in his PhD dissertation (published by Majlis-i-Taraqqi-i-Adab, Lahore, some three decades ago), Dr Sughra Mehdi in her rather weak thesis on Akbar and Ralph Russell and Khursheed-ul-Islam in ‘The pursuit of Urdu literature’ (Oxford, 1992).

Secondly, in Urdu there has been a group of scholars who have been analysing Urdu humour for long. ‘Tazkira-i-Khanda-i-Gul’, written by Abdul Bari Aasi and published in 1929, was, perhaps, the first step towards exploring Urdu humour, not a scientific one though. Then Rasheed Ahmed Siddiqui, Urdu’s popular humorist, wrote ‘Tanziyaat-o-mazahkaat’, analysing Urdu humour in the light of western theories of humour and citing examples of Urdu humour with commentary on them. In the 1950s, two doctoral dissertations on Urdu humour appeared, one in Pakistan by Wazeer Agha and the other in India by Ghulam Ahmed Furqat Kakaurvi. And then Urdu literary magazines began a marathon research on Urdu humour, publishing special issues on long history of humour and satire in Urdu, prominent among them were ‘Aligarh Magazine’, ‘Saqi’, ‘Nuqoosh’, and in the later period, ‘Shugoofa’ (Hyderabad Deccan) and ‘Chingari’ (Delhi).

In recent years, there has been a continuous flow of PhD theses on Urdu humour both in India and Pakistan. Latest in the series is Dr Ashfaq Ahmed Virk’s thesis published in 2004, not to mention the incessant flow of research papers and articles published on the topic in various journals. The flurry of research on Urdu humour has hardly left any aspect unexplored.

Aside from these minor submissions, I am all praise for the book. Published by Delhi’s Manohar Publishers and Distributors, the book proves that South Asian humorists have shown a highly developed sense of humour as they have produced rich humorous literature that knows how to laugh at oneself. Will Rogers once wrote ‘Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.’ South Asian humorists think that anything can be funny, including what is happening to oneself.

drraufparekh@yahoo.com

MOST of the deputy superintendents of police making a mockery of the prescribed rules are serving in Faisalabad for years and are doing nothing to clutch at the rising trend of crime but are watchful only of their personal interests.

A survey gives out that a majority of influential DSPs are holding their posts in Faisalabad for as long as a decade. They don't bother to follow rules formulated for serving in any area because of having strong political connections. They are not only succeeded in getting their transfer orders cancelled a few days after their posting in other areas but are also maintaining working circles according to their own sweet will.

High-ups are well aware of the unusually long service period of all such DSPs, but they find their powers clipped in the midst of these officials’ strong links with political stalwarts.

Known as a hub of the textile business, Faisalabad was declared the city district during the last local body elections. It was divided into eight towns --four urban (Jinnah, Lyallpur, Iqbal and Madina), and four rural (Samundri, Tandlianwala, Jhumra and Jaranwala. Creation of towns had also created various seats of town police officers having ranks of superintendent of police and supervisory police officer (SPO) with a DSP status.

The government has been offering special allowances to DSPs who are working as SPOs in different areas, but they have failed to yield any positive results. These officers become active only when high-ups have to intervene in any case.

Police figures show that the crime rate is registering a sharp rise with every passing year. In 2003, the crime profile in the district was 19,977 which rose to 21,100 in 2004, 21,951 in 2005, 25,329 in 2006 and 26,389 in 2007.

In 2007, of the total registered 495 murder cases, 73 are yet to be traced and 12 cases have been cancelled. The murder figure was 448 in 2006 and untraced cases stood at 79 with 16 cancelled cases.

At present, eleven SPOs are deputed in the district -- Sheikh Aamir Masood (Gulberg Circle), Shahid Butt (Batala Colony), Saleem Warraich (Kotwali Circle), Mian Khan (Mohal Factory Area Circle), Sajjad Mohammad Khan (Civil Lines Circle), Amin Wattoo (Saddar Circle), Mehr Shoaib (People’s Colony Circle), Tahir Maqsood (Nishatabad), Khalid Malik (Jaranwala Circle), Mehmood Sardar (Samundri Circle) and Mian Irfan (Tandlianwala Circle).

It is learnt that five of these DSPs -- Malik Khalid, Amin Wattoo, Mehr Shoaib, Tahir Maqsood and Mehmood Sardar – are deputed in the district for years with the alleged patronage of some political bigwigs.

Another influential DSP Mumtaz Deo, who was transferred a few months ago from the post of SPO (People’s Colony), has again been posted in the district as assistant director of the Anti-Corruption Establishment.

Similarly, Malik Khalid was transferred to Shahdara, but he had strong enough links with the musclemen that he succeeded in clinching the post of Jaranwala SPO within a couple of weeks. Earlier, he was posted as Factory Area SPO.

DSPs Amin Wattoo and Shahid Butt, who were also transferred to some other district, are back again and are stretching their muscles for their choice seats.

These officials are enjoying heavy perks and privileges, but they are making no effort to arrest the alarming crime rate.

A police officer, requesting anonymity, said the police force had been facing problems to arrest the surging trend of crime because these police officers had sound connections with the influential people.

He said: “How can such police officials take action against unscrupulous elements”. He admitted that on a number of occasions secret information was passed on to criminals because of their links with these police officers.

District council member Alfonas Sahotra alleged that almost all the DSPs were well-connected with criminal groups who regularly greased their palms for running gambling dens, drug and other monkey businesses.

He demanded that the government immediately transfer the DSPs who had been posted in the district for a decade and were involved in patronizing the corrupt elements.

A DSP, on the condition of anonymity, termed all allegations baseless and claimed that it were their expertise and skills to curb the crime that the high-ups had kept them posted in the district.