TONY HAWKS
I HADN’T BEEN expecting to come to Kolkata and have a bloody good laugh but as it turned out, that’s what happened. I laughed out loud, I laughed heartily, and, if I’d had the foresight to have brought it with me, I would have laughed enough to have fallen out of my chair.
My flight landed at 4.30 a.m. and I had expected the taxi ride to the hotel to be through deserted streets, but I soon learnt that there was already a bustling vibrancy about the place – cars and auto rickshaws were buzzing around with scant regard for the old British idea of driving on the left, ragged men pulled carts bearing eccentric loads, and the odd cow aimlessly milled about the place, no doubt rather chuffed that its sacred status meant it could wander freely, unhealthily munching at the bountiful rubbish which lined every street. When we passed a large park, I was surprised to see it teeming with people. It was as if there was some kind of event going on.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked my driver.
‘Nothing. It is like this every morning.’
‘But it’s 5.45. What are all these people doing? Where are they going?’
‘They are exercising. Many people will walk for two hours around this park before they begin their working day.’
I stopped the taxi and got out to survey the scene for myself. Hundreds of citizens were involved in diverse activities including stretching, jogging, walking, meditating, and practising yoga. How different this is, I thought, to the sight that will greet you at the break of dawn in most British parks – a solitary jogger if you’re lucky, a lonely lady with a dog, and a man in a raincoat who looks set to expose himself. A smallish boy walked past in a school uniform. He had no compunction about staring and I felt I had to say something.
‘Good uniform!’ I said.
‘St Xavier’s,’ he said, ‘the best school in Kolkata.’
I heard voices which seemed to be chanting ‘Ho!’ and ‘Ha!’ at regular intervals. This noise seemed to be emanating from a spot beyond some trees. I signalled to my driver to wait while I set off to investigate, and turning a corner I was greeted by the sight of about a hundred people standing in the shade of a huge banyan tree. The gathering, which seemed to be predominantly elderly, were all following the bellowed instructions of a man who stood before them, waving his arms. The men were separated from the women, and all were lined up, much like prisoners in an exercise yard. The ‘Ho’s and the ‘Ha’s continued, until suddenly everybody burst into hysterical laughter, throwing their heads back and waving their arms in the air. All very odd.
Weary from my flight, I began to wonder if this was some kind of weird hallucination brought on by fatigue. Like me, the park’s passing joggers and walkers stared in amazement, except for one or two, who must have known something that we didn’t. I watched as the throng beneath the tree indulged themselves in a very big laugh, which was followed by a flurry of hand shaking and goodbyes.
‘Are you interested in joining us?’ asked an elderly gentleman who had wandered over from the gathering.
‘Joining what?’
‘The Laughing Club,’ said the man. ‘We meet here every morning at six o’clock. Why don’t you come? You will enjoy the benefits which laughter can bring to your health.’
The man, who was almost evangelical in his enthusiasm, went on to assert that laughing artificially at some ungodly hour of the morning could help with asthma, arthritis, back pain, digestive problems, depression, fatigue, insomnia, obesity, rheumatism and a weak memory. Proud boasts indeed. I was dubious, but I responded as I always do when I’m being rather bullied into something, in a cowardly manner.
‘Sounds good,’ I said, ‘I’ll definitely try and get here in the morning, if I can.’
Naturally, I had absolutely no intention of going. Much as I like a laugh, I prefer not to force it, especially at a time when I should be neatly tucked up in bed, easing slowly towards consciousness.
I’d forgotten about my body clock, of course – the one that’s buried somewhere inside you which is totally inaccessible when you need to shift it forward or back by five and a half hours. I’d overdone the resting on my first day in Kolkata, choosing to doze and sit by the pool in my hotel instead of embarking on a fatigued initial exploration of the city, and there was a frustrating consequence of this. I was wide awake at 4.45 a.m., and with not many options on how best to pass the time. There was only one thing for it.
As I made my way though the park, once again I was amazed by the scenes which greeted me. It was the crack of dawn but this public place of recreation was packed full of people who were using it for exactly that – public recreation.
‘Good morning,’ I said proudly as I walked into the compound of the Laughing Club at six o’clock on the dot.
‘Aha! I see you have made it!’ said the same fellow who had collared me the previous morning.
‘Oh yes, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,’ I said, stretching the truth just a tad. ‘I am delighted to be here,’ I added to the now beaming gentleman. I looked down at the name badge which adorned his chest. It read ‘Commander Singh’. Commander? Was this Laughing Club some kind of military operation, I wondered? If it was, then its army wouldn’t have made a formidable fighting force. I looked down the line of old ladies in colourful saris, limbering up ready for their workout, and then over to the venerable old gentlemen in predominantly Western clothing, most of which had gone out of fashion in the early Eighties. This was a body of people who wouldn’t strike fear into the heart of an opposing army. No matter though – they were being trained to laugh at the enemy, a desperately underused military strategy and one which, in the right circumstances, might prove surprisingly successful.
A tall man in shorts with extremely knobbly knees smiled at me.
‘Are you from America?’ he asked.
‘Stop talking! And get into a line!’ barked another stern-looking man, before I had time to answer. Dutifully, everyone stopped talking and fell into line. I looked a little lost, not knowing what was expected of me, but Commander Singh leapt into position, pointing to a spot where he felt I should stand. I obeyed, fearful of a court martial. Shortly, I was to wish that I’d chosen a slightly different spot.
The man leading operations was a fit-looking ‘sixty something’ who was slightly scary, on account of having one eye which was all white, with no pupil. He would have made a good James Bond villain, I thought. He lead us through an unreasonably thorough sequence of stretching exercises, which I found quite exhausting. Eyeballs were revolved, ears were tugged outwards and then poked into with our fingers, and every joint and muscle was elongated, tightened, constricted, relaxed, distended, all to the rhythm of the bellowed orders from our cockeyed leader. Only one of my organs was left unstretched, no doubt because to have had me stretching that in a public place would have led to an arrest. As ever, it would be down to me to stretch that in my own time.
I began to wonder why all this exertion was necessary for a group of people who just wanted a vigorous titter of a morning. This was hard work, especially for me, because it was patently obvious that all those years of not doing this kind of thing at six in the morning had left my body incredibly unsupple. All around me my venerable colleagues reached the positions with ease while I winced in agony, trying hard to haul my body into place. Kolkata was a very humid place, even this early, and I was beginning to sweat profusely. This was painful. Very painful, and not at all what I’d been expecting. When would we ever start the fun bit? When could we start laughing?
As it happened I caused some extracurricular laughter as a few of those around me began to notice what a state I was in. The man who still thought I might be American was smirking constantly, but soon he was to laugh out loud. This happened when I emerged, dripping in sweat, from a feeble attempt to touch my toes, only to reach upwards to the sky and feel a moist deposit on my head. I looked up to see a bird fly off,1 looking, in my view, slightly smug and pleased with itself.
Commander Singh, having seen my misfortune, smiled and whispered to me.
‘This, my friend, means you are lucky.’
Hmmm. How can a bird crapping on my head be anything other than unlucky? What about Commander Singh and the man with the knobbly knees, whom the droppings had just missed? Had they both experienced extreme bad luck by not having their hairdos soiled by the mischievous bird? I think not.
Another twenty minutes of stretching exercises followed, in which time the sweat in my hair was mixing with the recent bird droppings to create a radical and unmarketable hair gel, guaranteed to deter any lover from affectionately running their fingers through your locks. To my relief though, we were finally ready to start the laughing, and I was delighted that the ‘fun bit’ could at last begin. The feeling didn’t last long.
The boss-eyed leader instructed us all to throw our heads back and to laugh hysterically, forcing the loud noises from our diaphragms. This seemed to come easily to those around me, but I struggled to find the sound, and when I did, it felt absurd. After all, I was being asked to force a laugh, and I’d been brought up in a culture where we only laugh when we find something funny, or when someone has said something distinctly unfunny and we want to mock them and make them cry.
The sound of everyone’s laughs echoed through the surrounding banyan trees. I looked up to see passers-by stopping and looking at us all in amazement. I was embarrassed, particularly since as the only white boy present, I was the focus of attention. Everyone was looking to see what I was like at laughing hysterically, and frankly my efforts were laughable.
I decided to cheat, and I began to think of funny things. Like the cricket commentator Brian Johnston’s comment after watching Ian Botham’s dismissal when he stumbled into his own stumps after a sweep shot – ‘Oh dear – he just couldn’t get his leg over!’ I successfully recreated in my head the sounds of the postprandial wine-induced sniggering and giggling which followed the remark, and soon I was ready to let out a huge guffaw of my own. Deep breath, Tony – go for it!
‘Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ho!’
A round of applause from the onlookers. Hey, I could get good at this. Further efforts began to free up some part of me that usually remained dormant till after lunch. Yes, it felt strange to be forcing the laughs, but I’d got the hang of it now, and I was discovering that the process was making me feel wide awake, happy, and refreshingly alive. I was beginning to feel that this activity wasn’t as daft as it had initially seemed.
‘Please come back tomorrow,’ Commander Singh requested, as I left the Laughing Club’s small enclosure, myself now part of a bunch of people who all seemed to be glowing ever so slightly.
‘All right, I will,’ I replied.
And this time I meant it.
It’s a funny thing, laughter. I’d spent a good proportion of my life trying to instigate it in others, and now I found myself in a city on the other side of the world, beginning my day by forcing myself to indulge in it – for health reasons. Could laughter really be that good for you? Could it, as the Laughing Club claimed, help prevent asthma, arthritis, back pain, digestive problems, depression, fatigue, insomnia, obesity, rheumatism and a weak memory?
Why do people enjoy laughing? Why do we constantly overhear exchanges like this? – ‘How was last night?’ ‘Oh, it was a brilliant night – we had a great laugh!’ Could it be that as humans we crave laughter because we have an inherent and instinctive sense that it contributes to our all round well-being?
I spent the day rejecting the touristy ‘walking tour’ suggested by my guidebook and instead I found myself wandering into alleys dominated by market stalls, and into a world of relentless commerce. Here, I simply stood and watched people. I guess my morning’s experience had left me faintly obsessed and I now wanted to see what prompted laughter in the local population. Were the population of this bustling city getting enough of laughter’s healing qualities in everyday life?
Certainly the foreign traveller in Kolkata doesn’t have to worry in this department. For them there is plenty to amuse, not least the reckless driving (what you need to drive in India is good brakes, a good horn, and good luck), or copious hand-painted ‘official notices’ which seem to adorn every office lobby or shop-front. Not all of these notices get it quite right. A branch of the State Bank of India was equipped with a ‘Compliant Box’ on the wall, and one hotel I passed had a sign up saying ‘Entry from back-side only’ – enough to make you think twice about checking in.
Suddenly I was no longer the tourist, but the keen sociologist, observing people as they go about their everyday business. These people seemed good-natured and content, but few were actually laughing. Oh dear, I thought to myself, I hoped they weren’t losing out.
Still vaguely lost in these odd musings, I passed a huge advertising hoarding for an Indian movie. I looked up at it in all its garish and ostentatious magnificence and was immediately reminded of what a friend had said to me before I’d left.
‘One thing you’ve got to do in India is to go and see a Bollywood movie in an Indian picture house. The atmosphere is incredible and it’s an experience you won’t forget.’
Well, it certainly seemed like a good way of spending the afternoon, especially since the city’s humidity was beginning to get the better of me, and I’d noted that the cinema on the advertising hoarding had boasted air conditioning.
‘Excuse me, but could you tell me where the Globe cinema is, please?’ I asked a small but perfectly turned-out fellow on a street corner.
‘Yes I can,’ he answered precisely. ‘You must take this street to your left and walk straight without hesitation. Then you must turn right after the big church.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, somewhat reeling from being told, in no uncertain terms, to walk without hesitation.
I set off, rather nervous that the man might be watching me just to see if I followed his instructions to the letter. So I marched steadfastly, without hesitation, not once breaking stride or dilly-dallying. And, as a result, I got hopelessly lost.
It would have been a scary experience had it not been for the fact that the people of Kolkata seem as peaceful and as unthreatening as a major city’s population could be. Never mind that I was wandering aimlessly up dingy, narrow alleys and past doorways where downtrodden figures lurked, watching me with what I took to be fascination but which could just as easily have been disdain; I felt safe. I stopped for a while to watch a snake charmer, peering through the large crowd of locals who were gathered round the cross-legged showman and his performing reptile. They turned and then cheered when they saw that a Westerner had stopped to view proceedings and the snake charmer’s eyes lit up. Forthwith, he doubled his efforts to get his trusty cobra to do his bit. I felt embarrassed that a better show was now being given because a wealthy Westerner had arrived on the scene – someone who had the capacity to toss in more money than the rest of the crowd put together – so I quickly threw in a handful of rupees and moved on . . .
. . . On still further into parts of Kolkata which featured nowhere on my tourist map. I was perspiring heavily and was beginning to feel tired. I stopped on a street corner to rethink my strategy. As I often do when deep in thought, I ran my fingers through my hair, forgetting that it was caked in the digested aftermath of a common mynah bird’s breakfast.
‘Shit!’ I said, being unexpectedly literal, and making a mental note not to shake anybody’s hand until I’d had a chance to wash.
Then I felt a tap on the shoulder. I jumped round in shock, to be greeted by the gnarled face of an old man.
‘You want me take you?’ he asked, grinning a toothless grin.
‘What?’ I replied, still momentarily shaken.
‘Me. I take you. Now.’
This didn’t sound good. It didn’t sound good at all.
‘I take you,’ he repeated, this time pointing to a sad, dilapidated rickshaw which was upended by the roadside a few yards away. It looked like it had been dumped. Apparently not though. It was more than ready for commercial use, and the wizened figure before me was its owner.
‘Me. I take you. Come,’ he said, gently tugging at my sleeve.
I would have laughed. I would have laughed a big healthy laugh but I didn’t. I didn’t because, although the sight of a man twice my age and half my strength wanting to pedal me around the city in his rickshaw was funny, it was also sad. Very sad. I would have refused his offer, if it hadn’t been for the fact that the fare was probably going to provide him with his next meal, and by the look of him, one that was long overdue.
‘Could you take me to the Globe cinema?’ I asked, already knowing the answer.
The old man beamed, nodded and ushered me into the rickshaw’s seat while he mounted the bicycle part of the contraption and began forcing his bodyweight down onto the pedals to get it moving. The sun beat down and I tried not to feel guilty as I sat back and watched my sticklike rickshaw wallah struggle through the overcrowded streets.
It took us about fifteen minutes to reach the picture house, by which time the old man was bathed in sweat and I was consumed with guilt. It wouldn’t have been so bad if, after I’d handed over the fare and a handsome tip, he hadn’t insisted on shaking my hand.
The picture house had clearly been built back in the days when there was more money in Kolkata than in the City of London, and pleasingly it still looked the part, if a little jaded. I wandered into the art deco foyer and found myself surrounded by an eager crowd, none of whom seemed particularly surprised to see a Westerner turning up to see a Hindi film. I bought my ticket, and then was almost swept up the grand staircase and into the vast auditorium by the sheer weight of enthusiastic and vocal customers, all anxious to take their seat for the forthcoming spectacle.
The levels of excitement were high because today’s movie was so ‘hot’. The Hero, as it was called, was doing great business in India right now, and was gaining much publicity because it was the biggest-budget Bollywood movie ever made.
I found myself a seat near the front of the balcony beside an extended family who took up the rest of the row. They were constantly up and down in their seats exchanging colourful sweets and unidentifiable miscellany. The father, who was next to me, looked at my hair and scowled, no doubt unimpressed by my choice of hair gel. The opening credits rolled, the audience gasped in anticipation, and I braced myself for three hours of full-on entertainment.
Not being altogether fluent in Hindi, some of the gentler nuances of the plot were lost on me, but I can reveal that the story centred around The Hero who was a kind of Indian James Bond with greasy, combed across hair (actually, not that dissimilar to mine at the time). He began the film dressing up in lots of ludicrous disguises for spying purposes and occasionally waving a gun about, before heading off to Kashmir where he upped the ante and single-handedly killed scores of pesky Pakistani soldiers, while jumping in the air and shouting a lot. Then he fell in love with a local shepherd girl who never went anywhere without a baby goat, which she stroked obsessively. Quality stuff.
It had been billed as an adventure/comedy/romance but unfortunately it only delivered in two of these categories. When we came to the scenes in the film which I reckoned were supposed to be the funny bits, I looked down my row to see the response of the extended family alongside me. Straight faces. Long faces, almost. Clearly, the comedy just wasn’t working. All the more disappointing for me, the man who had now become the student of laughter.
I’m afraid I can’t tell you how the film ends, not because I don’t want to spoil it for you – the director had handled that side of things most adroitly – but because I left during the intermission. Lazy, I know, but I had three sound reasons. My bottom was getting sore on the hard seat; the film felt like a cross between Last of the Summer Wine, The Terminator and Carry On Camping; and the expressions on the faces of those around me suggested that there was a general consensus that I should go home and wash my hair.
‘You are most welcome once again,’ said Commander Singh, with a little bow of his head.
‘Morning,’ I said, conscious of just how ‘morning’ it was.
I’d struggled to make this session. The body clock was reverting to normal and I was slipping back into the world where early mornings were vaguely obscene.
I was greeted warmly by a number of the other members, who all looked delighted to see me again. Perhaps it was because I was the youngest person here. Commander Singh was busying himself, generally ordering people about and being commander-like. I could do that, I thought to myself as he passed before me and nodded congenially.
‘Can I be a commander?’ I asked him mischievously, attempting to exploit the wave of good will around me.
‘What?’
‘Can I be a commander, like you? I’ve been here three mornings in a row now – surely that means I can be a commander now?’
Before the bemused man could respond to my perfectly unreasonable request, we were all barked at by a more senior Kommandant, and ordered to fall into line for another rigorous routine of stretching and cackling. It wasn’t long before my head was thrown back in laughter once again, and I found myself looking up into the thick green foliage of the banyan tree, with my mouth wide open. I couldn’t help thinking that it was an open invitation to the common mynah bird to go one better than yesterday and to relieve himself directly into my mouth.
Following another intensive workout of nearly every part of the body totally unconnected with it, we reached the point of laughter once again. A small crowd of onlookers had gathered, particularly interested in me just as they had been the previous morning. I began to feel it was important that these people saw that I was not the weak link in the club. I wanted to show them that I was no beginner at this laughing business – I was, after all, a veteran of three days now. I decided that I should go for a very big laugh indeed; a laugh that would see off any critics; a laugh to end laughs.
‘Ha ha ha ho ho hi hi ha ha ho ha!’ I went.
But somehow it didn’t feel big enough.
‘Ho ho ho, ha ha ha, hi hi hee hee, ha hah hoooooo!’
Better, but I was still being outperformed both in volume and length of laugh by two others in the group. This time I elected to really put my back into it. I leant back, threw my arms in the air, and I really went for it.
‘HA HA HA HA HO HO HO HO HEE HEE HEE HEE HAH HAH HA HI HI HO HO HAAAAAAAH!!!!!’
I finished my laugh with my head flung forward. I hung there for a few moments, well aware that I had expended a huge amount of energy and that I might not be able to summon enough to haul myself back into an upright position. When I did eventually straighten up I realised two things: that the laugh had impressed a good deal, and that everyone in the club was looking over and smiling approvingly; and that an acute shooting pain halfway up my body meant that I’d pulled a muscle in my back.
Bugger.
I’m not blessed with a high pain threshold, and I’m sure the back pain would have been tolerable to another, but for me it just wasn’t acceptable. The discomfort was ruining my sightseeing day. By the time I reached the Hooghly river and the Howrah Bridge, I was beginning to whinge to myself about the pain.
‘This is a right royal pain in the arse!’ I lamented, with anatomical inaccuracy.
Before me was an extraordinary sight. The amazing Howrah Bridge is surely the busiest in the world, crossed by 100,000 vehicles a day, and probably ten times as many pedestrians. It may have been stunning to observe thousands of people crossing one bridge carrying anything from fruit to engine parts, but my back hurt, and that was enough to spoil the experience. I needed a fix, and I needed one quick.
‘Do you know where I can get a massage?’ I asked sheepishly, in the hotel reception.
God I felt seedy.
‘I’ve strained my back slightly, you see,’ I explained to the nice young man, who I felt convinced was thinking that I really wanted a prostitute. ‘It doesn’t have to be a woman,’ I added hastily. ‘A man would be fine.’
‘You want a man?’ he replied, eyebrows raised.
Oh dear. I was making things worse.
‘No, it doesn’t have to be a man, it’s just that . . .’
Fortunately, he’d turned away to make a phone call before I could dig the hole any deeper.
An hour later there was a knock on the door of my hotel room. I answered it to a stocky fellow, thick set, with a low centre of gravity – he resembled a kind of Indian Maradona.
‘Massage?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I replied, rather taken aback.
The man introduced himself as Sunil and came into my room and set up his massage table. If the hotel receptionist had seen his brief as being one of providing me with a masseur/se that I didn’t fancy, then he had excelled himself. I looked at the brutish man across the room from me, and I just hoped that he would not be expecting to supplement his income by supplying ‘extras’.
After an awkward exchange in which we tried to establish the nature of the required massage without the use of a common language, the man set about his task. I’d agreed to a ‘full body massage’, mainly because these were the only English words he managed to mumble, but I’d failed to alert him to the problem in my back, despite numerous efforts. Whether I wanted it or not, a full body massage was what I was going to get. I uttered a little prayer that he shared the same loose definition of the word ‘full’, and I stripped to my pants and lay down.
A painful and nervous half hour followed, but I’m pleased to say that the burly man made no forays into the hallowed area of my underpants. Instead, Sunil pulled, pushed and slapped my body into submission and I felt a tension leave my body. When he reached my back he did something, I know not what, but I felt the pain which had plagued me all day lift from my body. I wondered if Sunil had extra healing powers.
‘Thank you Sunil,’ I said as he packed away his massage table. ‘You could make a fortune in England.’
Sunil wobbled his head from side to side in nervous deference, clearly not understanding a word I’d said. Maybe the fortune would be difficult to attain until he extended his English vocabulary beyond the three words ‘full body massage’.
The healing of my back left me able to sleep well that night. So soundly, in fact, that I slept through the last Laughing Club of my stay. When I’d gone to bed I’d told myself I wanted to get up early the following morning and go to the club, but I guess the truth was that I didn’t want to really. I could try to pretend that it hadn’t been a conscious decision to remain unconscious at the crucial time, but even though this argument might have stood up in a court of law, it didn’t carry much weight in my heart’s conscience. The truth was that the Laughing Club was too much like hard work and it happened too early. I needed less of a rigorous workout and I needed it at 11.30 a.m.
I felt guilty at breakfast, not least because I hadn’t said goodbye to the Commander, the Kommandant, or any of the other morning colleagues with whom I’d had such a good laugh. I hadn’t said thank you either – and the tuition I’d received at the Laughing Club had all been free. I decided that I needed to make amends in some way. Give something back, if not to the Laughing Club itself, then somewhere else. How I would do this, I was still unsure as I left the hotel for my final day in the city, but I hoped that something might come to me.
It was late morning when the idea arrived. I’d spent the morning wandering and observing, seeing at first hand how people really lived out their lives on the street. Mothers showered their children on street corners, men slept in doorways, kids played in front of their father’s market stalls dodging in and out of lorries, carts and rickshaws, and it all seemed perfectly normal. This was Kolkata life, and it was an entertaining show. But I’d bunked in without buying a ticket. By the time I’d reached Howrah Bridge, I knew what to do about it.
It was long after morning rush hour, but you wouldn’t have known it. Hordes of people swarmed around, among whom were many eager rickshaw wallahs, who eyed me longingly. I was potential business – and, for one of them I was about to be very good business indeed.
It was a few minutes before I saw the right fellow. He was slumped in his rickshaw, looking exhausted and altogether not that enamoured with life. He had white hair and a matching neatly trimmed grey moustache which turned downwards acutely at each end of his top lip, making it resemble an upside-down smile. His clothes were grubby, tattered and torn, and it looked like he needed the fare but was too jaded to compete for it. He was perfect.
‘Rickshaw please,’ I said as I drew alongside him.
The man, although confused that I had chosen him ahead of all his much more eager colleagues, immediately jumped out of his tiny chariot and ushered me into the cushioned seat. He’d got a job without even trying. It was his lucky day. It was about to get luckier still.
‘What is your name?’ I asked.
‘Ramesh.’
‘Okay, Ramesh, first we agree a price,’ I said to him firmly. ‘How much to the Mahatma Gandhi Road?’
‘Twenty rupees,’ he replied without hesitation.
This was probably an inflated price given that I was a Westerner, but it was still less than the cost of a Mars bar back home in the UK, and since this was to be an unusual journey, why not begin it in an unconventional manner? Without the almost compulsory haggling.
‘Okay, let’s go!’ I said, moving to the front of the rickshaw and taking hold of the shafts.
Ramesh stepped forward and stood over me possessively, saying something brusquely in Bengali. I guessed it was something like ‘What, in God’s name, are you doing?’
‘It’s Okay,’ I said, as soothingly as I could, ‘I want to pull the rickshaw. I want to see what it’s like for you guys. You get in. This ride’s on me.’
The rickshaw wallah was unhappy. Perhaps he believed that I was under the impression that I’d just bought the rickshaw off him, and was about to make off with it.
‘It’s Okay,’ I repeated. ‘You sit on the seat. I’ll pull you.’
Again Ramesh shook his head. I nodded. He shook his head again, and I nodded again. This went on for some time, until a small crowd had gathered to watch, and until I eventually said the magic words.
‘Okay, if you don’t sit in the seat,’ I enunciated firmly, ‘you don’t get the twenty rupees.’
This had the desired effect and Ramesh, albeit somewhat reluctantly, climbed into the seat of his own rickshaw.
Once the perplexed Ramesh was ensconced in the seat, the crowd let out a big cheer, and the first wave of laughter began. I set off, finding the rickshaw easier to pull than I’d expected. Simple designs are often the most brilliant, and the Kolkata rickshaw offers a smooth ride, is easily manoeuvrable, and provides excellent cornering. (Eat your heart out, Jeremy Clarkson.)
Now I was actually moving one about myself I could see how the transport policy of Kolkata’s authorities was absurd. They want to ban these rickshaws, concentrating on building flyovers to accommodate the forthcoming plague of motor cars.
The effort required to pull the rickshaw may have been less than I expected but what made it really tough was the 35 degree heat and the stifling humidity. After only a few paces the sweat was beginning to drip from my brow, something which only served to make the spectacle more hilarious for the amazed onlookers. I ploughed on through the beaming smiles and joyous chuckles. Children pointed and women cackled, and there were countless genuine double takes as people struggled to take in the reality of the scene before them – the daft white man pulling the old rickshaw wallah. I was joined by a posse of young men who acted as chaperones, helping clear the way when I came upon a congested section of street. A car pulled alongside me and the driver wound down his window.
‘Only in India!’ he said, before accelerating away.
People on buses waved and smiled, street traders and their customers froze in mid-transaction as they caught a glimpse of the unusual spectacle, but most of the roadside throng simply threw their heads back and laughed. Big raucous laughs, worthy of the Laughing Club itself.
As I arrived at the Mahatma Gandhi Road, wet through and to a huge cheer, I realised that my work here was done. In the last quarter of an hour alone I had created enough laughs to ease a good proportion of the city’s arthritic and digestive problems. Well, I liked to think so anyway.
As I stood there dripping with sweat among the small crowd, their hands reaching out from all directions to shake mine, I began to lament not being able to stay longer in this city. In the few days I’d spent milling about Kolkata’s busy streets and loitering in its parks, I’d grown fond of the Bengali people and their warmth and good humour. I’d learnt from the practitioners of the laughter therapy too, and my, it feels terrific to know that every future laugh I raise can be of benefit to someone’s health.
And by the way, have you heard the one about the group of authors who headed off to Kolkata? . . .
1 The bird was later described to me as being correctly titled the common mynah bird. In my view, you don’t get much more common than taking a dump on someone’s head.