Laughter - A Great Boon

Laughter – a great boontc "Laughter – a great boon"

You laugh and the whole world laughs with you.  You sulk and put on a grim face, you are on your own.  The whole world loves a man who has a sunny disposition and an amicable temperament.  But the man who always sees at the dark side of things and puts on a long face is severely left to himself as he makes himself unbearable in company. That is the way of the world and you cannot find fault with anybody for that as you yourself will do the same thing with regards to others. A man who has the gift of laughing heartily infects others with it and is never without a friend to laugh with him.

Pointing out to Cassius, Julius Caesar asks Antony to beware of him.  He says:  “He hears no music.  Seldom he smiles and smiles in such a sort as if he mocked at himself and scorned his spirit that could be moved to smile at anything.  Such a man as he be never at heart’s ease while they behold a greater than themselves and therefore are they very dangerous”.  How correctly Caesar judged such persons?  It was Cassius who was the brain behind the murder of Caesar. Philip II, a famous king of Spain, was a gloomy fanatic who was said to have laughed only once in his life time and that was on receiving the merry news of the massacre of  St.Bartholomew.

We, the Telugu people are not reputed for sense of humour and it is certainly not our distinguishing trait.  But, that doesn’t mean that we are gloomy or cynical either. We are known for our good humoured approach to life.  The saying in our language that laughter is bad in four different ways is only an idiomatic expression and that too much of it, in season and out of season, is bad in many ways.  It is only a lunatic who laughs within himself without any rhyme or reason.  We snub anyone who laughs without proper occasion for it.  Such a man is never taken seriously nor is he held in great respect.  Shakespeare must have had such persons in mind when he said, “Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time, some that will ever more peep through their eyes, and laugh like parrots at a bagpiper”.

Doctors tell us that when we laugh thirteen muscles of our face are brought into action whereas twenty six are called into play when we frown.  The strain is so much more upon us when we are angry than when we are cheerful. Though doctors warn us of the consequences day in and day out, we are not a whit the wiser for it.  Besides features like “Laughter, the best medicine”.  “He who laughs, lasts” which provide with a rich fare of humour in our magazines, many dailies carry cartoons which enliven the readers.  After going through the usual stories of violence and crime we turn to those pages and laugh heartily.  That cleanses our bosoms of the perilous stuff and gives us sufficient strength and courage to survive in this mad, mad world.

We see children who are not exposed to the electronic media and jet age games, still playing an interesting game for which no equipment is required.  In it one group would sit tight-lipped while the other group would try to make them laugh, cracking jokes or telling funny stories or making queer gestures or sounds.  One by one all those who fail to resist the temptation get eliminated and finally he who laughts last comes out winner.  For them it requires all the effort in the world to refrain from laughing.  It is all a child’s play. Children enjoy the game laughing to their heart’s content.  Little do they realise then that a day would come in their lives when it would be so very difficult to laugh seeing what they find all around them.

When I was very young, I saw Charlie Chaplin’s great movie, “Gold Rush”.  I laughed and laughed till my sides started aching though I did not understand much of it. Whenever, I recalled to mind that picture of one of the greatest comedians of the world whatever I might be doing then, I would burst into laughter quite oblivious to the surroundings.  Such was its impact on my young mind.

In later years, it was Shankar and R. K. Laxman, the great cartoonists, who made me laugh with child-like gusto in the privacy of my room.  In moments of depression, I often turn to their pages which never fail to enliven me and lift me out of that mood of despondency.  Calling it a day in September 1975, Shankar wrote in his farewell Souvenir very touchingly thus: “So, now, we leave you with the Souvenir which, we hope, will be a part of your library to be thumbed by the old nostalgically and by the young for the fun of past years.”  Yes, they are a part of my library and whenever I go through them, I laugh heartily and realise the full import of R. K. Laxman’s words that, “there is still much to laugh at in this world despite the cold-war chaos, the bickering among the hysterical big powers and the nuclear plot that is a foot to annihilate life on earth, presumably to save the world!”
It was the great poet Francis Thomson who put it beautifully when he said that, “Nothing begins and nothing ends that is not paid with moan, for we are born in other’s pain and perish in our own”.  In between these two ends it is all laughter and tears, the latter mostly serving as a foil to the former.  “Our sincerest laughter with some pain is fraught, our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought”, says the poet Shelley.

It is said that man is the only thinking animal in the creation.  That I do not know for certain. But, is he not the only laughing animal?  If I am not far wrong, it is only the ape which giggles and that too only in imitation of man.  Nothing in the creation is without a purpose and it passes one’s comprehension with what grand plans the inscrutable Providence has devised this safety valve for man to escape, even though for the time being, from “the weariness, the fever and the fret” of this world.

I am yet to hear of a people who are so self-centred or devoid of any sense of humour as to consider it undesirable or unhealthy. Some may be endowed with more of it or some others with less of it but none utterly lacking in it.  It is only a difference of degree.  It is well-known that of all the people, Scotsmen, as a race, are full of that genial temperament.  I have   known from my personal knowledge of some of them as I had the good fortune of having four scotsmen, all wonderful persons, as my Professors in Madras Christian College. They can crack jokes against themselves and laugh with you heartily as none else does.  Some of the well known jokes in Currency about their tight-fisted nature, I have heard them from them.

Blessed are those who have the gift of growing old gracefully laughing and in pink of health.  When we can laugh and end the jaundice and ‘the heart-ache’ and “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, it is a consummation devoutly to be wished.”  Let us then laugh till our sides begin to ache and be healthy.