A few good laughs

The best humour blogs of India may be far and few in between, but the ones that are there are a laugh riot, writes Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan.

I love a funny read. It's hard to get humour from print, because you're just relying on words and and the reader's imagination. It's because it's so hard to get a laugh out of a printed page that I am partial to humour in writing. Therefore, this week's theme is humour blogs, and since those seem to be a dime a dozen, I thought I'd set my sights a little higher and look for humour blogs in India. Easy? Er.. not so much.

For one thing, as a nation, we aren't really very funny. Oh, sure, people have a sense of humour and all that, but Indian comedy — and this extends to comedy writing —tends to be dramatic and overdone. They couldn't do worse if they inserted a laugh track and had huge cue cards saying: PUNCH LINE. LAUGH NOW. YES, NOW. Humour writing on the whole — especially on the Internet — tends to belabour a point till you feeling like yelling into your monitor: yes, I get it already!

Search results
So after a long, dedicated search, I tried to winnow out the best of Indian "humour" blogs which made me laugh without using a sledgehammer to get their point across.

First up, is Twisted DNA (http:// www.twisted-dna.com). Loving the template with the Alfred E Neuman banner, and this blog actually made for pretty consistent good reading. I wandered over to his "Favourites" section, but I found the posts on the first page to be more to my liking. Especially the spoof on Stephanie Meyer's Twilight (http://www.twisted-dna.com/2009/02/23/chicken-soup-for-vampire-soul/) which made me laugh out loud and the one where he created a spoof software to go with watching Bollywood movies (http://www.twisted-dna.com/2006/08/17/ craptastic/). Good stuff, and well worth wasting a work day at.

Secondly, there's Great Bong (www.greatbong.net) who everyone should know, if you don't already. Fun satire, regularly updated, this hugely popular blog even won 'Most Humorous Weblog' at the Indibloggies. Take a look at The Passing Of A Friend (http://greatbong.net/2006/05/23/the-passing-of-a-friend/) and you'll know what I mean.

Then, I found funny Indian roadsigns over at travel blog Kunzum (http://kunzum.com/signs). Consider a few gems like 'You May Not Be Superstitious, But Believe In Road Signs'; 'Darling, I Like You, But Not So Fast' and my own personal favourite, 'Be Mr Late, Better Than Late Mr'.

And, that's all I've got. Everything else seemed overdone and really not funny at all. Sigh. So, in order to leave you with some writing that I consider top notch and laugh out loud, may I recommend Cake Wrecks (cakewrecks.blogspot. com)? A blog about the world's worst cakes, no, seriously, you would not think there was so much material out there, but there is. I've spent a long, long time reading her archives, and I don't think you'd be able to resist them either.

If you, or someone you know, has a humour blog that you think is being unappreciated and unacknowledged, send it over and I'll be happy to eat my words. Until then, cue punchline and I exit with a laugh track.

Meenakshi writes at www.thecompulsiveconfessor.blogspot.com . Send her your queries at meenakshimadhavan@gmail.com