Author: Khushwant Singh
Publisher: Vision/Orient Paperbacks
Year: 2005
Language: English
Pages: 144
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8122203140
Description
The biggest Joke of recent years is that in a nation as humourless as us Indians, joke books sell like hot Pakoras. This is the sixth compilation of jokes culled from my columns in The Hindustan Times and the Tribune to be published by Orient Paperbacks. Every one of the earlier books in the series has gone into more than a dozen reprints. They are to be seen on pavement, railway station and airport book stalls as well as book stores extending from Murree (Pakistan) to Chittagong (Bangladesh). Not many people know me as a novelist, writer of short stories, a historian of the Sikhs or translator from Urdu to English but as a compiler of Jokes. No one take me seriously; I am a joker. Wherever I happen to be, men and women cluster round me and demand, Koi Joke-Shoke ho jai-tell us the latest joke.
Author’s discovery is that his fellow countrymen are about the most laughable in the world today. Nowhere else will you find so much disparity between what they say and what they mean. We proclaim that we are a spiritual people indifferent to material well-being; in fact, we are more obsessed with many than most others. The most effective weapon to puncture their inflated egos is to make fun of them and make them appear as ridiculous as they are.