Where's the wit? Why English Op-Eds are so serious

The absence of humour writing in English newspapers has been an intriguing question for me. In Urdu newspapers these days, Ata-ul-Haq Qasmi and Gul-e-Nokheiz Akhtar constitute an irresistible attraction for readers – and that too when print media is past its heydays.

The absence is more a matter of linguistics than anything else. The elitist approach of the users of English lends an air of seriousness to their creative outpourings. Laughter is attached, in our context, with Punjabi. We often see celebrities and intellectuals code-switching between English and Urdu on one side and Punjabi on the other whenever they want to add pizzazz to their discourse. There is a folk maxim that corroborates this linguistic racialism: Jokes and indecencies can achieve their impact when they are worded in Punjabi. Such an approach by contrast attributes all seriousness to English, being considered the mark of one's being civilised and cultured. This ideation dates back to our colonial past.

Our English columnists write as an authority or expert, taking readers as an audience or laypersons. Such a relationship between a writer and his readers eschews all intimacy -- a prerequisite for the humour to be communicated. The social status attached to English and its speakers burden them with heavy social freight, which suffocates humour. To keep up appearances of suited and booted high gentry all the time in public demeanour straitjackets one's mind, which then forgets to take long and high flights -- the threshold where mind becomes imagination.

The virtuosos of the art of writing assert that writing humour is much more a difficult skill than writing serious, both emotionally and technically. Humour writing requires a touch of exaggeration. As English op-ed writers have to be down to earth, they feel stymied in developing a knack for exaggeration in themselves. Similarly, the students of English struggling with its grammar all the time confine themselves to regurgitating what is in the cellar of their mind as they don't grope for novelty in their mental attic. To read, write and understand humour, one has to be well versed with the figurative meanings of words and sentences.

The English columnists argue that they have to cater to the interests of a specific readership: the urban upper and middle classes, the bureaucracy, and students of competitive exams. It leaves no room for using humour as a medium. Here, Urdu newspapers score a point over English newspapers by highlighting serious issues in a lighter vein.

The elitist background of English columnists deprives them of sharing any cultural commonalities as they suffer from penury of local culture. They are incapacitated for playing on puns, innuendos or witticisms, whose major staple is local culture. Their elitism permeates even deeper into the selection of subjects of their columns. A sense of superiority forces them to assert their worldliness, their sophistication or their connection to global discourse. They find it inferior to come down to treating various facets of a common man's daily life. Traffic problems, weddings imbued in local culture or children's schooling issues might sound local to them. Factually, 'no topic is off-limits for comedy'.

An English columnist can write tediously on inflation while an Urdu columnist will talk about the rising prices of tomatoes or potatoes. The latter will amuse the readers while highlighting the issue. The former writes abstract while the latter writes concrete. The concrete writing creates a bonhomie, while the abstract one, otherness. A serious columnist tells us what is wrong, while a humour columnist, without turning us cynical, shows how ridiculous wrongness has become.

On the remedial front, the English newspapers might start with the English translation of Urdu columns of humourists like Ata-ul-Haq Qasmi, Athar Shah Khan (Jaidi) and Qamar Ali Abbasi, who are our common national asset. In the letter to the editor section, humour writing can be invited to find the untapped talent. The cartoonists can also be employed to write op-eds, as they already have the flair to say light what's heavy. We will have to discover our own PG Woodhouse.