Laughter — the most lethal weapon

Comedians hit back at society in no-holds-barred session

KARACHI:

Nothing was off limits in the ‘Laughter, the Best Medicine’ session, where satirist Nadeem F Paracha and comedians Saad Haroon and Sanjay Rajoura dissected society’s faults, one joke at a time.

“We’re not trying to solve the world’s problems here,” warned Haroon. Termed “the most populated session at the KLF”, the discussion was peppered with profanities and ribald humour. Paracha lamented that Indians and Pakistanis take satirical pieces too seriously, as illustrated when an audience member later asked him to label his pieces as satire to prevent confusion. “We struggle with satire in our culture,” agreed Haroon.

Singing a few lines from his parody song ‘Burka Woman’, he praised her nose and toes and spoke of the virulence in the video’s comments section. “The video got hundred of thousands of hits and people wanted to hit me hundreds of thousands of times.”



If an Indian or Pakistani posts a video, they will always find a way to fight about something in the comments section, remarked Rajoura. “We don’t have a sense of humour,” he sighed. “I’ve always believed I’m not there to entertain an audience, they’re there to entertain me,” he claimed, thumbing his nose at people demanding he cater to his audience’s sensibilities. “I pity the people who actually pay to laugh,” he smirked.

“Comedy has to offend someone,” he declared, adding that there is so much humourous material in the subcontinent that it almost begs comedians to make jokes about it. Practicing what he preached, Rajoura joked about the dismal state of democracy in the subcontinent, claiming that while India mistakenly thought it could handle democracy, Pakistan did not even play that game.

“I abuse in my jokes, even when women are in the room, because to do otherwise would be sexist,” he said, replying to a question from an offended elderly audience member. Making no apologies for his nature, he said he went on stage to vent his anger and he did not care much for making a change. “I went on stage and people found me funny, so I asked for money,” he laughed, relating how he got started as a stand-up comedian. “You can’t go slap everyone but you can make jokes,” he claimed.



Haroon, on the other hand, had slightly more altruistic motives for becoming a comedian. “I can’t do much but if I can add that little bit of laughter and make someone’s life better, then I’ve done my job,” he said. Sometimes you have a message and sometimes you do not, he explained, adding that there was a distinct lack of laughter in society.

Rajoura touched on Pakistan’s hot topics, politics and the army, and related a saying from his hometown: “Whoever joins the army is given a gun but their brain is taken away. When they retire even the gun is taken from them.”  He laughingly berated politicians of both countries, claiming the Gandhis and Bhuttos were in good company.

There are very few topics that Rajoura chooses not to joke about and that include rape. “If you want to make a rape joke, make it about the perpetrator not the victim,” he said gravely.

Speaking about boundaries, he said there is nothing that cannot be joked about. “When your joke is tackling a stereotype then you’re doing the right thing,” advised Haroon. Comedy comes from all around, he claimed, jokingly prescribing Xanax for a particularly difficult audience member. “The country that stops laughing is living its last days,” agreed Rajoura.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 7^th, 2016.