As 2014 turned into 2015, a Pakistani fishing boat suddenly went up in flames off the coast of Gujarat and sank, and the government of India put it out that the Pakistani crew had set themselves on fire, either because they were terrorists, or because they were very unhappy. Who can be sure? I mean, people are always going up in flames in Gujarat, and nobody ever has a clue about who did it. Maybe it's spontaneous combustion.
Then the Coast Guard DIG was shown on video fondly reminiscing about ordering people to blow up the boat. The government said that the DIG had misspoken, and went looking for him with a steely glint in its eye. The DIG immediately denied saying it, refusing to let audio-visual evidence derail his narrative arc. The upshot is that nobody knows how exactly a Pakistani boat burst into flames and sank after we chased it for an hour and surrounded it.
In some countries, that would count as a fairly newsworthy bit of intrigue.
In this country, however, it is only as newsworthy as a situation involving another bunch of jokers, which also blew up, but differently.
People have been up all night yelling at each other and writing anguished op-eds about All-India Bakchod, or AIB, the comedy collective that you hadn't heard of until a couple of weeks ago and now cannot get away from. AIB recently held a roast of two Bollywood actors that featured swear words and sex jokes, as roasts do, and as soon as it was put online, invited a rash of complaints and First Information Reports.
One of the FIRs points out that AIB used swear words and made references to sex in an audience that included women. These women, in their simple, innocent way, brought their ears with them to the show. How could they have been prepared, by the word 'roast', for ribald humour? In mixed company! Do these AIB people think they're too good for women's safety? Ladies are so pea-brained - though, of course, a highly respected national asset - that they don't understand how unsafe they are in the presence of swear words. They bought tickets to the show, and laughed their highly respected posteriors off. Never mind, we're all here at the police station to clean up this mess.
As for the famously in-the-closet Bollywood personality who MC'd the show - pardon my French - his mother was in the audience. She had to sit there, in public, and listen to jokes about her son's allegedly gay sex life - and he even mentioned what position he likes! First off, Indian mothers, having had their fun, are no longer aware that anyone in the country is having sex. When they daydream about their sons, as Indian mothers are supposed to, they see them only torso up. If the son has children, then his torso is forced to float upon a cloud composed entirely of euphemisms. Mothers, never, never, ever, associate children with sex.
Thank god, there are people out there who care for our morality far, far more than we do ourselves. Without them, we'd just be some regular, grown-up nation with a sense of humour, or at least one that can live and let live.
The AIB episode should reassure us that we will steadfastly continue to address the long and scary list of India's problems - from infant mortality to casteism to gender violence to corruption - by trying to prosecute people who make jokes we don't find funny, and by trying to protect people who aren't offended. Way to go, fellow patriots!
Meanwhile, I hope someone is working on a roast of the Coast Guard and the defence ministry.
Mitali Saran is a Delhi-based writer mitali.saran@gmail.com
