Italians cannot take themselves seriously; they take adversity by deflating its gravity or ignoring it. D H Lawrence called them "as soft as spaghetti", and so Italians have laughed at themselves in this time of economic depression, the worst since the Great Depression of 1929, by giving enough votes to a comedian, Beppe Grillo. He is 64 years old, has no experience in politics and the only thing he promised the voters was a 20-hour work week and full medical cover.
Mr Grillo leads the "Five Star Movement", which he says is not a party. It wants to sweep away everything of the past and put in place instead direct democracy based on the internet. No parties, he says, because that's the root of all evil. He must have read Jayaprakash Narayan.
He got 30 per cent of the vote, giving him a decisive say in who forms the next government. By giving a comedian so many votes Italians are laughing at their politicians and the politics that breed them. In voting in such numbers for Mr Grillo, Italians probably reason, why don't we try another comedian - for we have had one for 10 years, Silvio Berlusconi. Mr Berlusconi's alleged sexual exploits, including accusations of sex with minors, are as well known as the charges of bribery that he dismisses airily. It is possible that he devalued the system so much that Italians have now come to think that it does not matter who sits in the prime minister's chair, a sex addict or a comedian.
So laugh your way out of the present gloom and doom, they think. By laughing you won't dispel the gloom - but you won't be weighed down by it, either. Laughing at a time when things seem so depressing is a good way to compose yourself. A composed individual is better able to face adversity than a nervous individual. A hearty laugh can greatly lift a depressed morale.
Mr Grillo, if put to power by the Italian voters, will amuse them. A comedian in power is far less dangerous and violent than a zealot or great do-gooder. Mr Grillo the comedian is unlikely to hurt Italians as much as a determined Mussolini, running the trains on time, did.
With humour the English took the loss of the empire rather cheerfully. That delightful comic weekly, Punch, devastatingly lampooned Winston Churchill, much to the delight of many Britons. I remember one from my student days in London: it showed Churchill wearing the Union Jack as a cumerbund, puffing heavily on a cigar and the cigar smoke clouding the map of the British Empire hanging on the wall; then Churchill yells, "But where is Aden?" Great Britain became Little England without much rancour. Humour made the transition easy.
We have no humour. We have no Punch; we have no Harvard Lampoon or Onion like the Americans have, or Le Canard Enchaines like the French have. We had a fine cartoon magazine, Shankar's Weekly, but that died quite a while ago.
Our Parliament is more disorderly than Westminster's, and debates here are often highly charged. But you hardly ever see a display of sharp wit. Manmohan Singh is grimly serious in his battles with the Opposition in the Lok Sabha. Tony Blair, on the other hand, amply displayed humour even when fiercely attacked by the Tories for his government's conduct of the Iraq war.
We just lost in a car accident a comedian of great merit: Jaspal Bhatti. With his theatrical seriousness, his deliberately unmodulated voice, he commented on events and personalities. They were superb. He could speak on something as mundane as a traffic jam at Noida intersection or an overflowing nala so humourously as to make you feel you were watching a fine comic play. We need more such voices in our public and political life.
The writer is at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi