Becoming a stand-up comedian today is an act of instant self-creation in India. You need no intermediaries like publishers, gallerists or distributors, not even chaste language. Any hybrid of English, Hindustani will do. With AI devouring jobs and politicians tinkering big-time with institutions of the state, our young are in dire need of comic relief. They will take perverse pleasure even in wisecracks full of racism, sexism or ageism – provided they move fast and deliver solid punches. There are no jobs and their world is going to the dogs anyway.

So when Kunal Kamra recently said, “Yaar, in buddhon ka kuchh karna padega (Man, something must be done about these old people),” there was laughter and a few clapped in the auditorium. He added something to the effect that after the age of 65, all dada-jis should shut up and retire from participation in public life. Why should the 65 category decide our future when they won’t even be around to live it? “Dada-ji, aapko 6 se 7:30 tak phone mileyga, 45 minutes, us per 9,000 words. Bus. (Granddad, you will get phone access from 6 to 7:30 and no more than 9,000 words. That’s it.)”

Ha ha ha. A hard-hitting fact, quipped @Abimashu17 on X, who was obviously amused.

Also read: The Limits of Punching Up in Stand-Up Comedy

What does the world do with its ageing folk? Traditionally we are expected, like the Pandava and Kaurava elders, to go on long vanvaas, away from the world of the young. In Aboriginal Australia, Bruce Chatwin writes (The Songlines), ageing elders believed they could become an Ancestor if they voluntarily and smilingly walked towards a place that promises the “right death”. Another kind of vanvaas.

The idea of just excluding the unwanted instead of caring for them as humans has recently got new wind, with hordes of boat-people descending on alien shores. A bit of quick research shows that the United States Department of State, eager to stem the tide of outsiders pushing into their country, has a term for those politely told they are ineligible for citizenship because they are ‘Excludable Aliens’ – ghuspaithiyas in local parlance.

What happens when the boot is on the other leg? Some three decades ago, after her only and dearly beloved son had gone to live and work in the United States of America, my writer mother agreed to pay them a short visit before age made it hard for her to fly long distances. The problem was that, by then, she was a diabetic with major liver issues. The first time she applied for a visitor’s visa, the US Embassy official told her that at her age and with her medical history, she needed to produce proof of an Indian health insurance cover, even if she was only temporarily visiting her son.

“What are our sons for then?” Mother had snapped back at the unsmiling American official, who had “breasts like October gourds”, Mother said. “If sons who have worked their backsides off for years as respectable US citizens cannot be relied upon to stand guarantee for their mothers’ healthcare in your country then, I am sorry, I do not wish to apply.” Her response was met by a head shake and a shrug – the universal response of crusty immigration department functionaries.

So, Mother dropped the idea. She was a proud woman, having made it past seventy despite numerous pregnancies, constant fasting for religious and astrological reasons, osteoporosis, a frozen shoulder and a near total lack of trust in modern medicine and new social distancing between a parent and her children. Of course, she continued to miss her dear son and his family. So, after a year, she was persuaded to get the damned insurance cover and she visited them briefly, swallowing her pride.

Gradually, memory, pickled in age, became fictional within her writer’s soul and she turned her encounters – such as the one above – into fiction. She brought on laughs recounting her experiences in the US, which perhaps helped her defend her pride and join the laughter. There were many like her, she realised.

During the flight, after a London stopover, she was seated next to a Pakistani mother. “When I pulled out my potli of pan and Baba Chhap zarda, I saw her eyes begin to gleam,” Mother told us. “Nosh fermaiye! (Have some),” she told her fellow traveller, who, after some hesitation, closing her eyes in beatific joy, took some and said, “Lagta aap Lucknow se hain...” The fellow traveller continued, “Humare mayke waley bhi Awadh-side se they” (You seem to be from Lucknow. My natal family were also from Awadh).” Mother nodded. “Jabhi itni badhiya boli hai. Ab kya batayein, bahin, hamaree aapki Urdu ka to in Punjabiyon ne hamare yahan bura haal ker diya hai! (No wonder your speech is so perfect. What shall I say, sister, these Punjabis of Pakistan have ruined your Urdu and mine),” her neighbour said.

Both women sat wrapped up in their thoughts of how so many of them had been suddenly deprived of everything that gave them an identity: land, language, zarda, paan. They were ghuspaithiyas in what had once been their own land.

We, the Midnight’s Children of India, born to those mothers, are all now past seventy-five. But dehumanising terms like ghuspaithiya (used copiously during the Bihar assembly election) and Excludable Aliens bring back memories of Mother’s poignant tales all over again. We may have  reached an age when, according to Kamra, we have become Excludable Aliens in our own land. So, can we (except political leaders and male Bollywood stars) just shut up and not be party to electing new governments or hogging many gigabytes?

Also read: What Should We Really Learn About – and From – Partition?

By now, many offspring of the fabled upwardly-mobile middle classes of nineties’ India have had their progeny living far, far away from home for years, if not decades. When we meet, we must do so mostly on Zoom or FaceTime. Births, deaths, memorial services – all can be live streamed now, and their absence goes uncommented. But, perhaps, just because of that, overtly segregationist talk is deeply disturbing – even if delivered with a smile.

Our interest’s on the dangerous edge of things.

The honest thief, the tender murderer,

The superstitious atheist…

Browning comes to mind. Seventy-five years of India’s democracy are slowly evaporating in the mists of time in Amrit Kaal. Only a pale, dreamless decade of ‘Do not Disturb’ remains. Most earthy dialects that were used within homes and marketplaces are evaporating in airless closed rooms, where children attend hybridised classes and parents order things online in English. The outside is toxic with dirty rivers and brown skies.

Like the Cheshire Cat’s grin, all that will be left as our own last memories will perhaps be the spiked hair, crimson eyes, bad Hindi/English and smiles of exhausted TV anchors and panelists.

They shall race ahead with the data generated to their political/corporate masters, all hoping that ideas and ideologies will take care of themselves. But the unseen audience that laughed and clapped for them does not realise yet that the TV images and headlines are a cruel portrait of millions of our young people riveted to them.

Thus, One Nation, under one format.

Mrinal Pande is a writer and veteran journalist.

Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes of what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author and as chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues.

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