{"id":3447,"date":"2021-01-20T16:45:59","date_gmt":"2021-01-20T16:45:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pujabhakoo.com\/?page_id=3447"},"modified":"2022-01-24T18:40:22","modified_gmt":"2022-01-24T18:40:22","slug":"british-humor-and-three-men-in-a-boat","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.pujabhakoo.com\/?page_id=3447","title":{"rendered":"BLOG British Humor and Three Men in a Boat"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Wit, they say, is educated insolence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like such definitions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No frills. No flab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two words and the gist is yours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a developing country like India, fodder for dark humor abounds in every abyss of irony, every crevice of poverty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being born in an environment where life itself is a joke for many, we Indians tend to inherit a wider gag palate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It makes us at home with both tongue-in-cheek and slapstick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, my choice of wit is Brit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, Brit wit with its elegant, understated, and delicately piercing self-deprecation fascinates me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like a sip of the bubbly, it tickles my mind\u2019s palate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I behold its words on my tongue and swirl with an indulgent flourish.  Playful thought bubbles tease my senses, igniting every nook \u2013 like glow worms lighting up a misty jar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I soak in the beveled sting of these bubbles; the words turn into chaff and meander down my gut; the thought cosseted within those words, breaks loose, and flirts its way up my cerebrum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A delicious assault unleashes on my anterior lobe, followed by a seductive caress on the dorsal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, morphing into a flush of inspiration, the humor impregnates a virgin pocket of intellect in my mind, which in turn sputters with warm creative rejoinders \u2013 simultaneously heaving the contented sigh of a satiated puppy who has just lapped up a bowl of porridge and is now ready to curl up in cloud-cuckoo-land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking of humor, I\u2019ve just put down Three Men in a Boat,<\/em> a book by Jerome K.Jerome (JKJ),  that\u2019s peppered with generous doses of the famed Brit wit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a book, which snob-schoolers apparently studied in their fifteens, but I\u2019ve got down to reading only now, in my fifty\u2019eens (as a commitment to my book club).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reviewed by millions of online readers, Three Men on a Boat<\/em> has mostly been described as ‘humongously humorous’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Well, humorous it is \u2013\u2013 if you brush aside the occasional PJ that blobs up like a soggy biscuit sailing woefully in an unfinished cup of lukewarm tea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, despite my soft spot for Brit wit, we didn\u2019t quite hit it off in the beginning, the book and I<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The culprit? Uncle Podger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remember the chapter \u2018Uncle Podger hangs a Picture\u2019 \u2013 part of the English syllabus in lowly high schools?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hated that chapter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uncle Podger did succeed in hanging his \u2018picture\u2019 in the story, which I found horribly unfunny back then (my mind clearly had not been pollinated with Brit humor yet), but unwittingly, he also hanged my class-VIII results. 
I scored a duck in the literature that year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I NEVER forgave the podgy Uncle Podger for the fiasco. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now suddenly, an initial chapter of Three Men on a Boat<\/em> brought my b\u00eate noire and me face to face again (I had no idea my school chapter was an excerpt from this book).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This unexpected confrontation brought back memories of being bludgeoned by my English teacher for drawing up a clumsy character-sketch of an obviously \u2018clumsy character.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I instantly took a vicarious dislike for JKJ \u2013 blaming him for the dressing down that I was given by my principal in front of my mom, some four decades back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, my acrimony with the author was established even before his Three Men could climb into the Boat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I got into earnest revenge mode right from the initial chapters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wearing shades \u2014possibly pre-colored with judgment\u2014 over my reader\u2019s eye, I was jumping paragraphs, chiding narrative, scoffing the content, and generally accusing JKJ\u2019s jokes as lacking rib-tickle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brit humor? My foot, Brit humor!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Three pore Men meanwhile scrambled for life jackets, not knowing why I was so hell-bent on rocking and sinking their boat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, almost forty percent into the book, my anger was spent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So was I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As dissipated the fog of hatred, so resurfaced my love for Brit humor.
I became kind, forgiving, and receptive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The jokes thereon became smile-worthy; the content time-worthy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My sense of humor gradually aligned itself with the author\u2019s, and my mind started sailing in the same boat as the Three Men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bubbly started tingling afresh my palate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So my review (if you can call it one) of Three Men in a Boat is essentially based on the second half of the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, comedy is clearly the raft on which the book’s characters sail; it is also the anchor on which JKJ\u2019s forte hangs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parts of the story throb with authentic Brit wit, where JKJ seems in full control of the winds that direct the boat into humorous waters caressing comical coasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He lets loose air-brushed anecdotes in the narrative, with relish. And flourish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then suddenly, the boat hits choppy waters of inconsistent narrative and sinks (into slumber) where the author seems to recall his mission of writing a travelogue (and not a joke book).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abruptly, almost as if guilty of enjoying himself too much, JKJ switches to a laden-with-meaning poetic discourse \u2013 a bait to keep the literati hooked on to the boat, I suspect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intermittently, exhibiting the sheepishness of an adolescent who has overshot his share of chocolate pudding, he turns to give a nondescript, somnolence-inducing account of his visit to some nondescript island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here, he seems to virtually struggle to inject some STORY into the story.
The narrative changes gears abruptly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You are yanked out of one thought flow and thrown into another. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

No caveat. No warning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such switches are jarring. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A little rude too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes an overkill with tale after tale after tale, steps on the tail of the narrative and smothers movement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So in the end, the book IS worth a read, though it ain\u2019t \u2018humongously humorous,\u2019 I’d say. Your liking the book also depends on whether Brit wit is your cuppa, or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If it is, raise a toast. If it isn\u2019t, well, raise your standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And now before I start reading the next book on my bucket list, a short bookworm prayer to the lord of semantics :<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Give me a Good Book, O Lord, or Give me Death.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Puja Bhakoo<\/a>, author, MOOD SWINGS<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those of you who would like to read up more on Brit humor, here are a few links:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

http:\/\/www.ef.com\/blog\/language\/beginners-guide-to-understanding-british-humor\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

http:\/\/time.com\/3720218\/difference-between-american-british-humour\/<\/a>
https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/British_humour<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wit, they say, is educated insolence. I like such definitions. No frills. No flab. Two words and the gist is yours. In a developing country like India, fodder for dark humor abounds in every abyss of irony, every crevice of poverty. Being born in an environment where life itself is a joke for many, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3447","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pujabhakoo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pujabhakoo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pujabhakoo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pujabhakoo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pujabhakoo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3447"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.pujabhakoo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4076,"href":"http:\/\/www.pujabhakoo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3447\/revisions\/4076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pujabhakoo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}