All’s ferrous in love and war
‘The trouble with Indians,’ opined the blogger-who-must-not-be-named, ‘is that we have absolutely no sense of humor. We are congenitally deficient in irony. We never get a joke unless it is the most obvious joke possible.’
‘What bosh!’ I said. ‘What about Shakalaka Boom Boom. Plus: Sherlyn Chopra. Bappi Lahiri. Hera Pheri.’
‘Point,’ he replied thoughtfully. ‘Such as Govinda. And David Dhawan’s entire Å“uvre.’
Sadly, events conspired to prove him correct.
on Wednesday, October 24th, 2007, 3:15 pm in Film, Humor, Musings › 
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Hoarding
Manish. Not everybody’s going to get your sense of humor all the time. That goes double on the internet, and has (almost) nothing to do with desis.
By the way, on the 4′6″ Turkish girl - I believe the word is ‘hijaban‘, like ‘punjaban‘, not like ‘sharaabi‘, which is how male adjectival nouns go (in Arabic-influenced contexts).
Both are true: not everyone will get the humor, but there’s an army of earnest desis who read blatant satire as straight news. This was the top complaint for the bloggers at Sepia, and the reason we introduced ‘Humor’ labels at the top right of those posts.
Though this happens daily over there, one of the most memorable moments was when our April Fools joke, a store selling the kind of exoticist crap we criticized year-round, got us on Hindu fundie petitions. I was amused to see myself listed as ‘enemy of Hinduism’ on spam to Arnold Schwarzenegger. Hasta la fundie, baby.
If the Onion were to publish in India, there would be a riot.
‘Hijabi’ is far more common in Google results, even among self-described Muslims. Maybe it’s like Punjaban vs. Punjabi?
‘Enemies of Hinduism’ ROCK!
It’s fun to see what the fundie sites claim is the lastest insult to Hinduism; they inverse-recommend some excellent stuff. I’ve become a fan of several artists they abhor, and I’ve gotten my own new fans the same way. They put more energy into getting the word out about us defamers than our own PR budgets ever could. If you play your cards right, Ultrabrown could increase its readership vastly by their efforts.
If I can add my two cents. I believe sarcasm is an American phenmenon, and, from my experience (especially) immigrants aren’t hip to it. Really. From all backgrounds.
Also, with all the South Asian blogs’ continuos growth, you’re going to continue to witness commenters spilling over from one blog to another. You gotta take good with the bad.
I believe Monty Python would be surprised to hear that :)
Irony and satire are not the same as sarcasm. I did once argue that satire and irony are more “Vestern” than Indian, but was corrected by several Indians who witnessed ironic and satirical passages in small community Ram Leelas. Now I believe irony and satire are more accepted in mass media in the West than in India, where they’re relatively rare. Perhaps blogs’ appearance as “mass media” cause some of the shock? Surely ironic humor is common everywhere, but its accepted role in public discourse varies between India and the U.S.
That was supposed to say Irony and Satire are not the same as Sarcasm. Dang these hand-typed html tags!
Manish, I think it’s like this: ‘Hijaaban’ refers to the person, ‘Hijaabi’ is the adjective.
So: The pretty hijaaban smiled at the passerby through the glass window.
But: The hijaabi culture had almost vanished from Kabul by the mid 1970s.
Interesting read on American/British humo(u)r:
http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,2009748,00.html
Chachaji: Right– she is hijabi, she is a hijaban. So the news column is correct.
Apologies, for implying otherwise, uberblogger ! :)
BTW, Laura Bush going hijaabi for the mosque visit yesterday follows Nancy Pelosi and Condi Rice, who also donned it for their mosque visits…