Recently I read a lovely post by Anuvab Pal, on the Random House blog, about the state of Indian comedy. Well, it’s dismal, although we didn’t need Pal to tell us that. I think Raghuvir Yadav, when he was on “Ranvir, Vinay aur Kaun” said it best – he called it “Chichorapan” in Hindi . You see lots of Chichorapan on desi tv shows – I’d written about one such show here albeit on a different topic. Pal, on Indian comedy shows, says :

Though wildly popular, (check out any intercity Jet flight’s entertainment system), this comedy is not often watched by the cultured classes, not because of the language but because of the aesthetic. Jokes, like everywhere else, involve telling a story and its foundation is the taboo (Ricky Gervais opener, ‘George Michael was caught having sex with a midget on a piano, his excuse…it’s an Elton John tribute’). But the mass Indian comedy describes non-confrontational and harmless incidents, spicing things up with odd noises, strange accents and body contortions. A lot of the time, it imitates Bollywood, never the lucrative terrain of sexual humor (the lifeblood of western comedy).

Complete post here.