Laughter in the Age of LOL

What makes us laugh? I’m asking because as human beings we seem to love to laugh and to make other people do it too. Laughter is highly contagious and pretty much anything can trigger it. A joke. A fart joke. A fart joke involving a rabbi. A fart joke involving a rabbi who is bald. It goes on.

There are places where we go and pay good money, just so we can have a couple of laughs. And then there are moments when your father insists on reading you a WhatsApp joke (instead of forwarding it to you) and laughter suddenly seems impossible.

Generating a laugh takes work. It requires a coordinated effort from our faces, voices, and bodies. It is hard work and hard work has disappeared like grace from the Indian political discourse. Which is why digital laughter, with its acronyms and emojis, is what passes for real laughter these days.

The wide use of “LOL”, “ROFL”, crying-with-laughter emojis, and funny faces gives you the ability to be insanely manipulative. If you’re chatting with someone you fancy, there is no limit to how much you can exaggerate their funniness. While facial cues are relative to every single person and impossible to fake, words and emojis have made it a level playing field. They are like universally acceptable online emotional currency that will not be called into question.

“LOL” has had quite a journey in its short history. It has lost its charm from the early days of the Internet where it was associated with genuine laughter but is now the real life equivalent of the chuckle, when you are forced to be appreciative of a joke that you didn’t really find funny. It is an acknowledgement rather than genuine appreciation of what was said. Nobody is ever laughing out loud when they type “LOL”.

But perhaps “LOL” is collateral damage to the larger perception on texting etiquettes where shorter words are seen as mean or indifferent, a case in point being “K”. You know you’re in trouble when someone sends you a K with only a full stop. “LOL” went through evolutions and soon we had variations in the form of “ROFL”, “LMAO”, “PMSL”, and so on. However, they haven’t stuck around as highly genuine forms of online laughter because the idea of Rolling-On-Floor-Laughing being condensed to a cruel four-letter acronym feels like studying for four months, writing a three-hour subjective exam, and being awarded grades in cursory letters like A, B, C.

When “HAHAHAHAHAHAHA” arrived, I thanked God.  It almost feels like the person enjoyed what was said with a good old laugh. It is in text, the replica of the loud sound we make when we laugh. When it runs into more than ten syllables, it is equivalent to a genuine burst of laughter. In the world of digital laughter, it’s a highly prized asset. It’s the closest you can come in text to knowing that your joke was found to be genuinely funny. Incidentally, “HAHAHAHA” seems to have a lot more sincerity into it than a mere “hahahaha”, proving once again that Caps Lock can enhance the power of all sorts of digital communication.

But between “LOL” and “HAHAHAHA” lies the “hehehe”. It has a childish evil ring to it, and the set of situations where it is used are fairly restrictive. In many cases, it is used to playfully validate a joke that would be deemed to be offensive or crossing the line. The other usage for “hehehe” is on the opposite spectrum, where a joke is found to be really silly to deserve a “Hahahaha” but it was so bad, it was good, and didn’t deserve a “LOL”.

Life is hard. And digital laughter is harder — a complex maze filled with nuances, but there are very few times in life when something is so goddamn funny that all nuancing goes out of the window and we are left laughing to the point of tears.  That’s when we use the crying-with-laughter emoji.  It is to be saved for really special occasions, but, in my opinion, is used far too liberally. A half-decent meme should not get this emoji. Neither should “GOAT” be used to describe every other TV show character. The crying-with-laughter emoji is to be reserved for occasions like the time your friend got caught watching porn by his parents.

Laughter isn’t only about the raw release of endorphins anymore, it is a new social contract, a millennial currency for cool, and now a new visual language in the form of emojis. We were once told laughter is the best medicine, but in the Internet age, it is difficult to decipher the doctor’s cryptic handwriting.

Inside the Mind of Sanjay Leela Bhansali

Sigh. It’s been a rough few months.

My good friend, Arnab Goswami who watched Padmavati (or Padmavat, even I can’t keep track of the names anymore) even before the censor board, played a clip on his channel. In it, a man announced a bounty of ₹1 crore for anyone who burnt Deepika alive. Then the next guy came in and announced ₹5 crore for anyone who beheaded me and Deepika. The next guy upped the bid to ₹10 crore. It was like watching ISIS have an IPL auction. I was shocked beyond belief. Is that all my life is worth?! Jesus fucking Christ, the economy has indeed dipped over the past few quarters, but this is low!

I still had it better than poor Shahid. After being ignored by the audience and award shows for his brilliant performances, Shahid Kapoor is now also being ignored by fringe groups issuing death threats. Nothing this man does is ever going to be enough, is it?

The producers have been quite supportive of me in the media but I can sense their passive aggressiveness in WhatsApp chats. “Why do you always have to create controversy, Sanjay! Every movie you make — Ram-Leela, Jodhaa Akbar, Bajirao Mastani, now Padmavati!” I was like, “I didn’t even make Jodhaa Akbar, that was Ashu,” but they don’t care. One expensive filmmaker to them is like the other.

At times, I wonder what I could have done differently? I thought I had this figured out when I released that video after being “inspired” by Karan Johar. I mean, let’s face it, his was a bigger crime. He cast a Pakistani actor in his movie. Not only have I not done that, I went further and showed a foreign Islamic ruler as a savage villain, when in fact he is not! I also cleared out the rumours around the dream sequences. To tell you the truth, ever since the controversy started, even I don’t get any dream sequences when I sleep. Maybe the video didn’t work out because I didn’t wear a black shirt against a pitch-black background. Karan is right, black makes you look thin.

People say I distorted history when I made Bajirao Mastani, they have again said I have distorted history with Padmavati. This brings back nightmares from school, when I always flunked history. To all young students who think, “When will quadratic equations ever help me in life?”, well, you never know. For the first time, I had to work with more historians and researchers than lamp-makers and interior designers.

I must let everyone know that I have nothing against the Karni Sena. Mostly because if I do, my life could be in trouble. If they want to protect the honour of women by issuing threats to other women, it is totally their call. What can I say, even I was slapped and roughed up some time back. The last time I felt so bad was when I was tracking the collection for Saawariya.

After these intense few weeks, I am fed up of this nonsense. I must have given more explanations than the people who carried out demonetisation. People outraging over it had not even seen the film, but wanted me beheaded. Everyone wanted a free private screening. Film hai ya One Plus ka invite?

I really should take some time off after this to make more meaningful cinema, where cars fly around, the hero beats up 50 people to pulp with his bare hands, there is an item song and sexist joke every three minutes. Making a historical movie in India is a lot like being James Franco in 127 Hours. You start thinking it’s going to be epic, but then disaster strikes… And you’re all alone, as you hopelessly wait for someone to rescue you.

Are the ’90s Kids the Coolest?

Childhood is just like an opinion: Everyone has had one and everyone thinks theirs is the best. Coloured by the vintage filter of nostalgia, viewed through the shattered kaleidoscope of adulthood, our childhood sticks deep, like religion. Look no further than when your parents start a sentence with, “When I was your age…” Grab a cup of coffee, because it is going to be a lecture in how this generation has lost the plot, and you’ll need the caffeine to stay up.

“Ye koi gaane hai? Gaane to Kishore Kumar aur Mohammed Rafi ke hote the. What is all this crap that you guys listen to, Honey Singh and Badshah? ‘Blue hai paani paani paani.’ What nonsense is this?” This is how every road trip with my family begins. The person sitting next to the driver, playing the role of the car DJ faces more pressure than Virat Kohli in a big run chase, as he tries to acutely balance the melodies of the ’60s with the beats from 2017.

Movies are another bone of contention and are usually easier to defend than Honey Singh. “What is with these people flying around on broomsticks and monsters roaming on the streets? It is so unrealistic,” pooh-poohs my dad, watching Spider-Man. Then he goes back to watching the 37th version of Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana on Zee TV. I fail to understand how he can watch different versions of the same thing over and over again, when he knows the entire plot and sequence of events. Change a few visual effects here and there, give or take a few plot points, and you could have Tiger Zinda Hai.

The “humare zamaane mein” line of thought extends to food too — the same brush paints anything outside the range of ghar ka khana as junk food. And as far as parental jurisdiction goes, all junk food is bad. Even franky, which is basically just sabzi and chapati that went for a masters’ degree to the States. “In our time, we used to eat only healthy and nutritious food,” says my Gujarati dad, coming from a family with a rich lineage of diabetes and heart diseases. Even our daal is so sweet that you could give it to the children who come trick-or-treating on Halloween.

And then there is the false braggadocio that could put a battle rapper to shame. “We used to just beat the shit out of each other while playing on the ground. We would steal mangoes from the neighbour’s farm, jump into the well, swim in dirty water. You guys are pussies.” My dad says it in a tone that indicates he’s proud of it. Sure, I am missing out on the typhoid, losing a couple of teeth, and ending up in jail but I’d rather just stick to safer pursuits like football or cricket. I’ve missed out on these character-building exercises, just the way I have missed out on walking three kilometres, swimming across the English Channel, and fighting the Demogorgon to attend the one school in the entire village. But what can I say, technology progressed and granted us a revolutionary invention in the form of buses.

But our parents can’t walk away with all the credit. We continue to keep this grand tradition alive by hating on the generation that succeeds us.

The entire “90s kids” train of nostalgia is designed to make our childhood feel special and unique, while we shit on the children of today. “Swat Kats, Tintin, and Johnny Bravo, those are cartoons. Cartoon Network of the ’90s was the real deal. What kind of heathen watches Ben 10 and Shin Chan?” “WWE of the ’90s was so lit, with The Rock, Triple H, Stone Cold.” “This EDM music is so ewww, what is wrong with you people?!”

Well, maybe the kids of today believe Johnny Bravo is a serial harasser of women. Maybe they don’t like Undertaker showing up every single time at Wrestlemania like Mihir Virani at a K-serial wedding. Maybe they enjoy losing themselves to… whatever it is that EDM is supposed to achieve. This is a different generation that grew up in a different time with access to different things, technology, food, and human experiences. They have different memories, different ideals, different Gods. What Charlie Chaplin is to my father and Mr Bean to me, Shin Chan is to them.

But I guess this is a function of age, the constitutional birthright of every generation to snark at the zillion imperfections of the folks that came after them. Just the way our parents told us that we don’t enact out the Hunger Games on the school playground, we tell younger kids that they don’t play at all. “I’m so glad I was born before this whole technology thing started,” we say. “No phones, no apps, no laptops, fantastic childhood.” All the while conveniently ignoring how technology enriches the lives of younger people. While a seven-year-old has access to Snapchat and the Gormint aunty video, he also has access to Wikipedia and Ted Talks.

I suppose this generation too will have its revenge with the one after. They’ll tell tales of how difficult their existence was, having to deal with 4G speeds and structured playtime. Just the way we romanticise our imperfect little worlds, they will romanticise theirs. On that note, Happy Childrens’ Day!

Ashish Nehra: The Forever Man of Indian Cricket

In 2003, the era before T-20, watching a game of cricket for eight hours straight wasn’t considered “boring”. The Indian team at the time was a batting masterclass. Sehwag, Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid, Yuvraj – you name it. But as good as the batting was, the bowling and fielding was equally lacklustre. You never knew what score would be enough. Our bowling unit never inspired much confidence. Whether it was 300 or 350, it could make any score look mediocre.

At age 10, this lacklustre bowling was my single biggest worry. (Yes, I’m that uncool.) The England-India game at Durban was a must-win World Cup game and we put on an average 250 on the board. I had as much faith on the Indian bowling line-up as I had in Santa Claus showing up for Christmas. England lost a couple of quick wickets but a partnership was beginning to take shape.

In came Ashish Nehra, moving the ball both ways at a serious pace and he ran through the English middle order in a breath-taking spell of 6-23. It would be his career-defining spell. Also, the best for an Indian at the World Cup. Unfortunately, we wouldn’t see more of it often.

Ashish Nehra’s debut was the beginning of India’s long struggle for a quality left-arm pace bowler. The natural angle left-arm pacers create bowling to right-handed batsmen is a delight. With Wasim Akram and Chaminda Vaas tearing apart batting line-ups in the 90s, India was in search of its own left-arm sensation. And boy, did we really give it a go, with a string of left-arm pacers in Zaheer Khan, Irfan Pathan, RP Singh, and lately Barinder Sran, all breaking through to the first team.

Most of the other names have faded and only Nehra remains. He has been playing cricket for so long that it feels like he was one of the original dudes who faced the British for teen guna lagaan.

I was a kid when Nehra started playing for India and I’m now 25 and can barely run for five minutes while he’s still bowling 140 kmph after 12 surgeries. He started clocking 145 kmph regularly in his early days and his ability to move the new ball had several takers. But it wasn’t quite to be.

The only consistent aspect of Nehra’s career turned out to be his inconsistency. He played his last test match for India at the age of 25 and ended up playing only 120 games in an ODI career that spanned a decade. He was continuously in and out of the team, which was also a feature of India’s bowling line-up at the time, that kept shuffling like a pack of cards. He did leave his mark on big tournaments though, playing a key role in India’s 2003 World Cup campaign and doing the job for MS Dhoni in the 2011 World Cup semi-final when called upon. As predictable as it was sad, he ended up missing the final with an injury.

Fast bowlers and injuries is a heart-breaking love story. As Nehra jokingly says, “Players have injuries on their body, my injuries had a body.” Right from ankle surgery, knee surgery, finger fractures to hamstrings, Nehra has spent more time in the hospital than he has on the pitch. In fact, the autofill when you search for Ashish Nehra on Google is “Ashish Nehra injuries”.

But Nehra ji, a fond name coined by Virender Sehwag, is more than just the sum of his injuries. Nehra ji is a character, and a vibrant one at that. To quote Virat Kohli, “Nehra ji isn’t trying to be funny. He just is.” The mere mention of his name brings a smile to the faces of his teammates. His tone, mannerism, and style has its own set of fans. A list that includes seven captains and multiple dressing rooms spanning over 15 years.

Even Nehra ji’s criticism has its own charm. A classic third-man (code for terrible fielder), he had the quick reflexes of an elephant trying to flick away a fly. Yet, that didn’t stop him from once abusing MS Dhoni on the field for poor catching.

His sense of humour would have made him an overnight Twitter darling, but Nehra ji has always stayed away from the world of news and social media. In a press conference recently, when asked about the growing rivalry between Indian and Bangladesh fans on social media, he simply replied “I am the wrong person to ask this to. I still use a Nokia phone”.

Wish we could too, Nehra ji, wish we could too. And that’s the kind of advice we wish you’d pass on to your fellow Dilliwala, Virender Sehwag. You’re the lovable dinosaur we can all get behind.

Yet, there is a sweet irony in the fact Nehra ji’s simple and unassuming personality would find fruition in the blitziest, most glamorous version of the game – T20. He became the go-to man for captains across multiple teams during his IPL career. Rich in experience and still hitting 140 clicks, he mastered the art of death bowling that would see his rise in the franchise version of the sport. He became a “T20 specialist”, a title that only a handful of elite players have earned for themselves. He also found himself in ICC’s T20 World XI team for 2016, at the age of 37. Only Virat Kohli was the other Indian player on the list.

But he remains a reluctant superstar of the T20 game. As a man from yesterday in today’s world, he wishes he had played longer in the classic format of the game. He stated it in an interview recently, about how one of the disappointments of his life was how short his Test career lasted.

There is only one question to be asked, looking back at Ashish Nehra’s career. And it is one that haunts many fast bowlers India has produced over the last couple of decades: How different would India’s bowling attack look without the injuries?

The Story of Every Long Weekend Ever

Every group of friends has that one guy who keeps track of every single calendar (including the Hindu, Umma, Chinese, Attic, Mayan, etc) and unleashes havoc with the three most dangerous words in holiday history: “Let’s plan something!”

“Let’s plan something!” opens a Pandora’s box that could mean anything from a night out to a stressful four-day trip to Ladakh in the middle of October where the temperature drops (on a good day) to -1 degree. One can tell how excited someone is in the group based on how quickly they reply to the message, “Let’s plan something, bros.” The person who replies first is the only one really looking forward to it, while the rest just don’t want to be spoilsports and play their role in passive agreement. The occasional “Awesome” and “Let’s do it” need to be dropped to indicate you are game but may later back out due to unavoidable excuses.

Planning always begins big because planning doesn’t factor in reality. “Why don’t we all just take a holiday on Friday as well? That way, we have Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday off!” quickly goes to “Let’s take an off on Tuesday as well, maybe we can go to Bangkok.”

Eventually, like Rome, all roads lead to good old Goa. The Goa trip has now become the vanilla ice cream of getaways. It’s the default word that gets registered in the brain the moment someone says vacay. If there is a four-day break and you haven’t planned anything, your car begins driving itself toward Goa. The brainstorming on the logistics begins. “How much will it cost? Will we go by flight? Or train? Where will we shack up?”

As soon as the conversation starts to get serious and the recommendations start pouring in, one braveheart announces that he will not be able to make it. Apparently, he has a “family function” to attend. This is secretly the moment a couple of others have also been waiting for. The guy has taken one for the team and the floodgates have opened. Suddenly everyone starts finding flaws in the plan and why it is a not the best idea to execute right now.

If it’s just the three of us, then there’s obviously no point going ahead with the plan, everyone wisely concludes. Plan A has failed and it’s time to now move on to the next one, a slightly more realistic idea. One hiking enthusiast will invoke the idea of a trek and everyone will start celebrating once again. A day’s trek makes infinitely more sense because the first thing that comes to mind is “Sleep!.” You need to go out for just a day and have an entire day to laze before you resume with your hectic office routine. This, allow me to warn you, is the first sign of aging. The day you stop planning trips that have you landing early morning and then rushing to work, it’s time to read an eulogy to your youth. From here on, your whole life will be centred around the idea of sufficient rest.

Once the destination for the trek has been decided, the next round of 897 Whatsapp messages begins: The debate over the meeting point. You argue furiously to make sure that the meeting point is closest to your house. After all, who wants that additional stress of travelling to the meeting point and then travelling to an even further destination. It is very important to define the radius of how far you are willing to travel from home in terms of kilometres during the holiday. Once you have won the battle, you may retreat back into silence.

As you get closer to the day, the only person looking forward to it, posts the dreaded message: “What time are we meeting tomorrow guys?” Every single person reads the message instantly, but there will be complete silence for the next six hours. This is the time for the smart one to emerge. The guy who makes a last-minute excuse to ping the planner privately and tell him about his “emergency” (the cat got stuck in a tree). Now even the enthusiast has reached his limit. He rattles off a series of abuses and leaves the group.

Everyone who didn’t want to be a part of this plan heaves a huge sigh of relief. No one wants to admit it, but secretly they’re glad he’s gone.

In your head you now start to calculate all the things you are going to do at home with three full days of free time, most of which will be spent between three-hour naps and telling yourself you deserve them. On Day 2, you will finally leave your bed after guilting yourself into at least watching a movie or reading a book, and you will do this keeping in mind that you have another day to nap. This day now seems like the dream sequence from La La Land.

The final day of your much-touted weekend is a horror show — you realise that the three days got over faster than the stock at Big Bazaar on “sabse saste teen din”. Anxiety takes over.

Just thinking about the fact that you’ll have to go to office the next day stresses you out. You know that with every new email that loads, there will be inexplicable sadness in your life.

This is the reality of every long weekend. And when it is all over, you desperately look up the calendar for the next one, promising yourself to make the most out of it. But there isn’t a long weekend or even a public holiday in sight for the next couple of months.

Which, upon reflection, turns out to be a good thing. It turns out that a couple of months (or more) are exactly what are needed for the scars of the long weekend to heal. That’s enough time for your WhatsApp group to slowly convalesce from the twists, swerves, and heartbreak of planning the last weekend. It also takes that much time for you to decide that the avalanche of emails and to-do lists the Monday after is a worthy tradeoff for the daily drudgery that is the work week. And so, after enough time has passed, we give ourselves a case of voluntary amnesia and start making plans for the next epic getaway.

Goa, anyone?

“Hey Ram, My Son’s Nastik!”

Iwas watching Harry Potter on a lazy Sunday afternoon when my dad said, “This is so stupid, no one flies on a broom.” Now, I’m no Potterhead to take offence, but I felt like I just couldn’t let it go. “Well, it’s fiction. I know it’s not real.” I then paused for a moment and with a lower tone let this zinger fly: “I’m not the one who believes that a monkey flew with a mountain in his hand.” My dad stared me down until he exited the room.

Born in a Gujarati family, I was raised Hindu, but I went to a convent school and lived in a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood. My upbringing was so secular that if I were in politics, the Congress party would have already offered me a ticket by now. My mum must have done some “paaps in her previous life” (her words, not mine) that I turned out to be nastik.

Being an atheist in India can be confusing. There are multiple religions, hundreds of prayers, crores of gods, and millions of controversies surrounding us. I know only the Gayatri Mantra and it’s what I whisper in my head when I have to pretend to pray, regardless of whether it’s a temple, mosque, church, or gurudwara. As a nastik, you are not invested in any of the rituals and traditions, but you sure as hell are interested in public holidays. Nothing breaks your heart like finding out that Bhai Dooj will fall on a Saturday this year. Holidays know no religion.

Another thing that does not know religion is dance and food. Whether it is the ghaati dance during Ganpati, feasting on delicious food during Durga Pujo, kite-flying during Makar Sankranti, or playing with gulal during Holi, the celebration is hard to resist, even if you’re nastik. One has to be a sadist to not notice how beautifully the streets are lit up during Diwali and Christmas, but one has to be careful about making these observations. You don’t want to goad mum into asking, “Are festivals just about having fun for you?” This is a rhetorical question. Obviously, she doesn’t really want an honest response from me.

Over the years, I have mastered the classic Indian trait of adjusting my belief system as per my convenience. I visit the Ganesh temple near my house because I really love the kheer they distribute as prasad. I would accompany my Catholic classmates to church just so that I could bunk lectures, and on Diwali, I keep touching the feet of the elders in the family because each bow is rewarded with a cash-filled envelope. To be honest, I’m not different from religious leaders. Like them, I too exploit customs for my personal benefit.

This attitude, while profound, does cause a bit of tension at home. Diwali for instance, is fraught with arguments. My mum looks forward to waking up early, bathing, dressing up in all her finery, and performing puja, while I look forward to getting up in the afternoon, doing nothing all day, feasting on farsan, and scamming relatives for fat envelopes. Patakhas may be banned in parts of India, but fireworks are guaranteed at home.

The stress of waking up early and getting dressed is followed by the expectation of participating in the house puja with enthusiasm. One has to wear a clean kurta and stand with folded hands at least for two minutes when mum is around. What’s the point of praying if mum’s not taking notes? Over the years, I’ve mastered yet another trick. During the Diwali aarti, I indulge in such furious clapping that I could give a seal from Antarctica a run for its money.

While my parents have now gradually come to terms with me being nastik, they try to keep it under wraps when interacting with relatives. Courtesy, India’s classic “log kya kahenge” syndrome. Most of our relatives aren’t as casual about faith as my parents. As Gujaratis, they are very passionate about two things: God and Narendra Modi. If they find out about my religious orientation, they’d go into a state of shock and give me look you’d reserve for someone who’d just called NASA’s Diwali picture fake. They’ll then move on to condole with my parents: “You’ve not done a shoddy job of raising him, it’s this whole generation that has no values.”

Perhaps, it is indeed is a generation thing. With more people refusing to believe in any sort of god than ever before. My mum’s biggest worry right now is that my “shameless attitude” will rub off on my younger sister and she might also grow up to be nastik. In her worldview, that could be the new plague, a world full of people who don’t believe in god but still enjoy all the free food and booze that comes with celebrations of him.

Being nastik in a religiously charged country like India, where you have faith on steroids, can mean that there are seven different kinds of hell that you can go to, all in one lifetime. Until that moment, dare I say, “God bless you!”