Book Review – Tongue-In-Cheek: The Funny Side of Life, Khyrunnisa A

Let me confess. I am that guy on whose jokes nobody laughs. Be it in school or in college, or even at work, not many people break into a guffaw when I utter, what I consider to be, wisecracks. On the contrary, there were always some back-benchers - or junior staff members now - who made people around fold up with laughter, by uttering simple grunts and groans. Naturally, I have always envied people with such astonishing sense of humor. As I grew up, I understood the most important trick of making people laugh – never trying to make them laugh. Good humor is based on spontaneity and smartness. While I assumed that I had the smartness, I was never spontaneous. I always tried to make my jokes smart and sharp, ending up sounding incomprehensible in the process.

For example, read this joke and tell me how quickly you understood it – ‘There were two retired professors sitting in lawn, sipping tea and discussing things. One of them asked the other ‘Have you read Marx?’ The other one promptly responded ‘Yeah, it’s these pesky wicker chairs’. It took me a couple of minutes to understand this joke, but as the sheer smartness of the joke became clear, the joke got etched on my mind. While such ultra-smart jokes are fun to feel, they don’t tickle you at once and make you roll on the floor. Spontaneity is what produces such end results. Very few people exhibit such a perfect blend of smartness and spontaneity – to make people laugh with jokes that stick to the heart. Ms. Khyrunnisa is one such a blessed writer.

Blessed with perfect command over language and a keen eye for the innate quirks of human minds, the author has beautifully documented all those tickle-worthy moments of our day-to-day lives. From simple household chores to showy weddings, health fads to age-related ailments, silly fetishes to serious mishaps, there are so many things that we go through on a daily basis, blinkered and blind to our idiosyncrasies. This book will make one stop and think about similar incidents in one’s own life and smile in hindsight. I loved how the author repeatedly kept pulling the mickey out of herself and her own family members. Even while documenting the hilarity hidden in the acts/thoughts of the people around her, she makes us laugh, without exactly making them the laughing stock.

In a world that is increasingly feasting on silly, senseless, scatological ‘jokes’ and sexual innuendos, her style of writing, steeped in subtle, sensible, decent wit all through, feels like a breath of fresh air. Her style of alluding to things past and present, historical and everything else, wordplay and funny flow all remind me of Albert Uderzo and Rene Goscinny, famed creators of my favorite Asterix and Obelix comic series.

You may not ‘LOL’ at the end of every other sentence, but the genuine hilarity of these tales is guaranteed to give you a lightened mind and some hearty laughter. Tongue-in-Cheek is cheeky indeed!

A.