By PRAVEEN CHANDHOK
If I had no sense of humour, I would long ago have committed suicide.
-Mahatma Gandhi
Definitely you must be questioning, why are we talking about humour in these unparalleled times? The explanation is simple – we fail to notice the truth therefore individuals and businesses frequently do not foresee and deal with prevailing threats. Here humour helps to melt the contradiction.
By way of humour, we recognise truth as ludicrous, unforgivable and malleable. Once we are unquestionably aware, it becomes effortless to talk honestly about what’s happening and what steps we should take to resolve the problem.
A sense of humour helps us tide over testing times. The pandemic simply cannot stop it. Sharing some wonderful quotes which not only brought a smile on my face but were also relevant and insightful in many ways:
• Divided we live, United we die.
• You can have your Covid and spread it, too!
• Ignorance is a kiss!
• Cough goes around, comes around!
• An unmasked guy is the Covid’s workshop!
• Necessity is the mother of infection!
It is seeing Covid in a different perspective: the change happens gradually… until it changes unexpectedly. How come we were so ill-equipped? Will we finally start to work together wisely and act audaciously? The call of the times is to discuss this: It is imperative to converse, however our communications consist mostly of uni-directional statements… We go on shouting trying to convey our thoughts and when no one listens or pays any heed, we shout louder.
We all are part of a system that’s extremely bunged up, making of our own combined preferences. The institutional ossification has created disaster of the rightful thoughts.
As we are forced to stay home, our life, specifically the work life, is ruled by zzzZoom, the constant videoconferences appear to be deliberately planned to strip us of our candid humour and forthrightness, derailing the strong teamwork CORONAVIRUS times call for.
We simply must do better.
Humour isn’t merely amusing. It’s elegant, tactical communiqué. And, honestly, in these unprecedented times we should get smarter, quickly. We need to adapt and evolve in these extraordinary times or else the Pandemic and other shocks can lead us to ridiculously conventional blunders. Humour has the power to lead us from shadows to sparks of enlightenment and transformative development.
Mark Twain rightly said,” Humanity has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution—these can lift a colossal humbug—push it a little—weaken it a little, century by century, but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand”.
It turns out, fun is FUNctional.
“Humour is just another defence against the universe.” –Mel Brooks
(Praveen Chandok is former President SJA Alumni Association 2015-2017)
