The Liberating Power of Laughter

(And Its Frustrating Futility in This World)

.

I am ten years old. My father and I are spending a weekend at his sister’s house. At dinner, my uncle points out that Manu, the son of a doctor uncle from Birgunj, who is staying over for a medical exam the next day, has been missing for some time. We find him – an hour of commotion later – in the bathroom. He is lying unconscious on the floor. A pool of fresh blood, dripping from his veins, encircles him in beautiful shapes and mixes in his oily hair. I squirm. That hair will need too much washing if he comes out alive. They call a family doctor (my aunt’s husband is rich and has a social standing of his own, something I would be reminded of again during demonetisation in 2016.)

The doctor brings Manu back to life, much against his will, I suppose. But I am glad my cousin is surrounded by adults. I wouldn’t know how to handle the situation. To them, it comes naturally. My uncle grabs my cousin’s collar and launches a hard slap on his face. Then another. My father stops him. I think they are upset that he tried to die in their house. From phone calls to Lata chachi and doctor uncle that I am not supposed to hear, I figure that Manu is bad at science. He does look like the kind of person whose favourite period is activity period.

I see him lying in a bed. I pity him. He had to go through a failed attempt at death, suffer a greasy, smelly head, and have my aunt’s sophisticated sweet mushroom curry (because spicy food is for labourers) – all in one night. I sit with him because I am curious where he went before they brought him back alive. He scratches his throat and asks me if I know what tws means. I shake my head cluelessly. Ten ways of suiciding. I don’t say it out loud. His eyes draw out comically as he whispers to me, ‘takla wery smart’ meaning ‘baldy is very smart’. I start laughing, not because it is funny but because he is bad even at spelling. Very, not wery, I want to say to him. Why is he even taking a medical exam? I do not ask him that. I can read a room, unlike all the adults in this house. So, instead, I ask him who is takla. Unable to stop his laughter, he says, ‘my father.’

*

Somebody has told Lata that the only way to attain complete moksha is to return to Sanatana dharma. It was probably a guru on YouTube. She has stopped drinking tea. Her husband would have hated her for this. Now, she drinks sattu made from roasted chickpea flour every morning. She goes to school and tells children to say ‘Ram Ram’ instead of ‘Good morning, Madam’. She says ‘Har Har Mahadev’ instead of ‘Hello’ when she answers the phone. Sometimes, because habits linger, she accidentally says, ‘Hello – Har Har Mahadev.’ The way she says it, it always makes Girija giggle. Stupid woman, Girija thinks, comforting the wounds Lata inflicts upon her through her frequent humiliations.

Lata is a widow waiting for her retirement in the coming June. Her husband got Covid from one of his patients (that’s what Lata tells everyone) and died two years earlier. Their elder son had already passed away a few years before that under unclear circumstances. With some support from her husband’s colleagues, Lata has managed to send her younger son to a medical school in Russia. Now, she wards off her loneliness by ensuring Girija works overtime at her house when she can annoy her with stories from the Vedas and Puranas. When Mohan comes back home, she will fix his marriage. The guru also said that a woman can only find true happiness after she has fulfilled her worldly duties by getting her children married into proper families of the same caste. Lata has finally understood why she has had a long sad life. A widow from a loveless marriage and mother of a dead elder son who was too young to take matters like death in his own hands, Lata now desperately clings to the day when she can marry Mohan off so she can finally meet Brahma’s eyes in heaven.

She has tasked Girija with finding a suitable bride for him, since she works in the houses of many Brahmin families in the town. Girija scowls. She cannot believe there exists a woman whom the gods hate enough to send into this family. She has always disliked Mohan – what a brat! The only person she liked was Manu and he is gone. But she knows a bride will be found for Mohan. It’s people like her who struggle to find jobs, partners, dignity, a pension.

As Lata recites a chapter from Bhagwad Gita to Girija, she sullenly washes the dishes, hoping to break one glass, just to get back at her employer for her daily acts of cruelty: separate plastic cups, unnecessary taunts and suspicious glances, to name a few. Sometimes, when Lata looks around fiercely for her purse or silver rings, Girija starts telling her a joke and laughs out loud, pretending she is clueless as to the meaning of Lata’s gestures. She couldn’t possibly steal anything if she is laughing right into Lata’s eyes. It always works on Lata. Only when Lata finds her missing possession where she had kept it and forgotten, does she return to Girija’s joke and giggle, exposing her upper caste, betel-stained teeth. Girija is disgusted by her false smile. The little space of protection that Girija’s jokes offer her, are always violated like this by Lata’s guilty laughter. Sometimes, in other places, Girija laughs awkwardly when she cannot scream and point her dirty fingers at a clean-collared man.

The stifled laughter of the weak is the victory-song of the powerful. Girija never leaves for work without her stifled laughter in hand. And stifled laughter follows Girija wherever she goes, just like the burdens of her identity.

*

Ammu had that dream again. Somebody balled her in his fist, sealed her lips and put her into an orange. The frustration of not being able to open her mouth is immediately replaced by the awe of floating inside the sour orange waters. She is naked and the same colour as the seeds that she keeps bumping into. She feels warm and safe in the amniotic fluid of the fruit. There is an intoxicating lightness around her which makes it possible for Ammu to invent colours and creatures of her own. Most of them will die as soon as she wakes up, but some will forget their paths and collide into her memory, forever to stay there like something stuck in the teeth that you just can’t seem to reach.

She recites the dream to her grandmother.

‘The person who put you in the orange is somebody who does not like the things you say. But they also know you well enough to know that you will not complain if thrown into an orange,’ concludes her nani after a long pause.

They stare at each other as the clue hangs in the air for one crucial second before Ammu tells Nani it was Papa who did it. She says it with a giggle. Nani gets back to her rosary, grumbling. Ammu turns to her reflection in the mirror. She did not like her face when she was a child. She always had a feeling she’d have liked it if it belonged to somebody else. But she hated it on her own body, and sheltered behind her beautiful hair. The only thing she felt she inherited from her pretty mother was her long hair, but Nani insisted that she got her mother’s smile too. After that, Ammu always hid her face behind her wide smile.

She’s an angry, jolly woman now, Ammu. She laughs all the time, even on inappropriate occasions. Manu had named her khikhi because he said she laughed like a monkey. It was easy to laugh when he was around. His humour had saved her on the days her father ruined for her. Papa dislikes humour. He also disliked the only cousin Ammu truly liked. But he doesn’t anymore. You can’t hate a dead person. What an unkind thing that would be!

khikhi khikhi khikhi

A teacher saw Ammu and her friends in a tea shop, laughing with two boys.

khikhi khikhi khikhi

Ammu laughed when Mr MLA tripped in her father’s office on Independence Day.

khikhi khikhi khikhi

Ammu laughed her most mocking laugh somewhere in the middle of her heated argument with Papa’s friend when he said it is Brahmins who are in danger today. He said to her father, as if she wasn’t there, that she had become insolent after which she laughed harder.

khikhi khikhi khikhi

Ammu looks her father in the eyes and says she will never marry a man, for only a woman can show Ammu love and make her laugh at its follies.

khikhi khikhi khikhi

Ammu laughs as the pundit ji dozes off while performing death rites for her mother. Papa glares at her, she laughs back. Is it better to sleep and lie before the gods than laugh before them? Insolent Ammu.

Papa is the product of a culture that rewards performance. Act smart. Act clean. Act properly. Act seriously. Picture his childhood: he and his brothers along with their father paying solemn respect to the naked king while the street-kids laugh in their faces.

The king is naked! khikhi khikhi khikhi

Ammu tells Papa the story of the naked king. Poor king! Papa says. He feels closer to the clownish king than to the people who sound like himself. He makes Ammu angry but he can never tell because Ammu only ever laughs. Her laughter creates gnarly echoes which she entraps in the walls of the house and releases on her whim. Papa can hear Ammu laugh even when she is far away in a foreign city, reading foreign books, playing with foreign ideas about life, gods and sex. He is afraid the world does not have enough laughter factories for his feral daughter. She might go look for laughter in another world where Manu lives. But he cannot blame Manu for Ammu’s waywardness. He cannot deal with Lata didi’s rage again.

He moves in his big bed, alone all night, dealing with the memories of the unsettling giggle which once belonged to his wife. She did not laugh a lot; daughters-in-law are not supposed to. He suddenly misses his wife. There’s a liquid stone in his throat that his eyes spit out in small portions, without his permission. He tells himself that by sealing Ammu’s mouth, he will only protect her laughter. He will gently put her back in his wife’s womb and tell her to nourish Ammu again to become like all other normal seeds in the pre-life potion. Because Papa cannot unhear society laughing at the failed father he is. The ghost of Ammu’s mother sighs across the window in the moonlight. It is not that serious, my love. Just laugh and get over it.