Your Editor,
“A good laugh is sunshine in the house”, says William Makepeace Thackeray, English Novelist and Illustrator. He is known for satirical works. Good laugh comes when good jokes come out. Laughter is a good response for good joke. A good joke ruminated in the mind quite often evokes laughter even when there is no one to share it. Freedom to laugh will not be available at all the times just because some jokes shared in the past come to mind. It would be obligatory or inevitable to control the laughter when the classes will be going on in schools, while meeting is addressed by someone, when discussions will be going on in the congregations, when present in places of worship, courts, police stations, hospitals etc. Schools and meeting grounds are not totally insulated from the opportunity for laughter. When a good joke is cracked by the teacher, the students laugh from the bottom of heart. The room in which students are housed experiences sunshine. Sunshine in the form of laughter can be seen during night time also. A grief-stricken person cannot laugh. Peace and happiness are the pre-requisites for a person to laugh even when jokes are flung. In meetings also, often jokes are cracked and shared. Schools and meetings do not get bored if space is provided for laughter. Class room or meeting hall is filled with sunshine when laughter among the students or attendees in meeting is generated by the teachers or the persons addressing the meeting. More often than not, people have the experience of waiting for an opportunity to laugh in the meeting halls or in the places where serious discussions are going on. One who is unable to control his laughter will be waiting for an opportunity for a joke to come out so that his laughing can be drowned in the sea of laughter with others for some other joke released in the hall of congregation. A good laughter is tonic to the health.
Laughter coming from the bottom of the heart is the product of peace, happiness and response to good jokes. Laughing at others is frowned. Laughing at others triggered by any event that hurts the others is not sunshine. It would be thunderous. (A mythological story suggests that Lord burly Ganapathi after consuming food to his heart’s content falls off his vehicle Rat while he will be going. On seeing this the Moon laughs at him. Lord Ganapathi curses the Moon). Laughing with others is joysome. Spontaneous laughter is uncontrollable. It knows no bounds and breaches the dam of restrictions. There is also the usage of words ‘last laugh’. Last laugh is the satisfaction of ultimate triumph or success especially after being scorned or regarded as a failure. When someone is discarded by a friend or group of friends and relative or group of relatives, if that discarded person is honoured by other group of friends or relatives, he would have a last laugh. One will make himself a laughing stock when he tries something seemingly stupid or silly but ultimately does not succeed much to his own chagrin and much to the expectation of all. If someone does not succeed in something much to the delightfulness of his enemies or rivals, it is in Kannada described as “laughing at the person who stumbles while walking”. Laughter greeted with laughter sparks sunshine. The timing and context of laughing only determines whether a laughing is sunshine or not. Laughing is used as a tool to pooh-phooh at something also. Laughing can make or mar the situations. Care should be taken to make laughing always a sunshine.
K.V. Seetharamaiah