Situational Humour

Nahid Siddiqui: Deadpan humour

There are jokes and jokes – extempore jokes, rehearsed jokes, unintended jokes, online jokes read from a mobile, jokes that cannot be narrated in mixed company… And then there are jokes that arise at the spur of the moment, suddenly catching you off-guard!
Here is one. A little dog scampers around playfully while we exercise in the Garden. Shekhawat mischievously directs it towards his bête noire, Arun Patil. (The two are on a perpetual

Fahmida Khan's granddaughter, Saleha celebrates
with sweets after passing Class 3 with flying colors

collision course with no love lost between them.) “Go, go away… your Arun-bhai is standing there,” he urges the puppy. “Go to him!”
Arun, known for being a stickler for discipline, overlooks the provocation and continues with conducting the exercises. Suddenly from the circle, Nahid Siddiqui speaks out: “Please don’t send the dog to Arun. He will make it wear a cap!”
Nahid incidentally, is one of the quietest of all lady members, her voice rarely heard above the group. For her to make such a wisecrack can be far more devastating than the continuous jibes from a motormouth like Shekhawat. In fact, there are other ladies like Karuna Waghmare and Khatoon Baig, just as capable of startling us

Banoo Apa (l) is relentless. She treats us to tea and biscuits...

with their off-the-cuff one-liners.
But then, the ultimate natural has to be Bijoy Gupta with his joke-a-minute targeting (who else, but) Shekhawat. After his many innuendoes on the latter’s obsession with leading a human train, Gupta has turned his attention to Shekhawat’s new “disease” -- his insistence on pulling off the rather awkward kissa-kursi-ka exercise to perfection. This involves bending the knees, arms outstretched, as though you were seated on an invisible chair.
The problem here is to stand upright immediately after, thereby putting tremendous stress on the knee and calf muscles. Like many others, Gupta has consistently avoided doing this, much to Shekhawat’s delight. It gives him a reason to shame Gupta (never mind, he himself is incapable of lowering his butt too far down) and receiving a mouthful in return. The latest is of Gupta comparing Shekhawat’s half-seated posture to that of camel trying to squat on the ground. But that hasn't changed anything.
Not so long ago, Gupta returned from a trip to Rajasthan, his only abiding memory being “naked camels” stalking him.