A Series of Un-serious Events

When I left a ‘promising’ engineering career to pursue a PhD in Literature, people thought it funny. 

They were serious. 

Those less serious—like my professors at the department—suggested I zero in on an area, a topic, an author I could live with (and hopefully enjoy the company of) over ‘the next three–four years’, and probably forever, for the choice I was to make now would colour the rest of my academic career and, in turn, my life. 

Soon into the programme, I found myself at odds—with the grim air the folks wore about them; with the jargon-laced ‘essential reads’ and scholarly exchanges I was sure could very well be summarised in the colloquial and were, in fact, age-old staples in villages and towns like the one I came from; and for my utter lack of conviction, despite peer re-assurances, that our ‘work’ was going to tilt the earth’s axis the other way.

I had to find something, someone I could live with for my research years, and forever. 

It was humour. Found, at last, after weeks of serious research. 

Over the next couple of years, I befriended the late Kurt Vonnegut and lived in his mad, mad world—a tragicomic mirror to ours. Until then, I was unaware, like fellow Vonnegut fan Shehan Karunatilaka, ‘that it was possible to … be heart-breaking and hilarious within the space of a sentence’ and ‘mix sci-fi, jokes, war stories and philosophy and still have a terrific story.’ 

I read more, and discovered that others, too, had given gravity their middle finger. Others like the Bard, Dostoevsky, Wilde, Saroyan, Heller, Gabo, Naipaul, Parsai, Rushdie, Shrilal Shukla, Ashok Pande, and Roddy Doyle. (More recently, the Teen Taal podcast has been a revelation.) 

I wanted more of that in my world too. For humour to be taken seriously. For the grim to be given its due and then made a mockery of. 

I pitched this book around midnight sometime this summer and got an email that made me smile, minutes after. Clearly, the publisher was as un-serious. 

We went the unsolicited route (another un-serious move), received writings from all over the world, and ended up with the twenty-four in this book from writers based in eight countries. 

Some of these writers I have had the pleasure of knowing and working with before. The others I regret not having read earlier. 

I was born and raised in Bihar, where humour is obvious, inevitable—like life and death. And I echo the lament when Tabish Khair, from the same soil—the land of the Buddha, tells me how ‘We in “Indian English India” do not really take humour seriously enough.’ 

I am glad to present these stories that span cultures and ‘senses’ of humour. They are varied in themes and styles yet equal in their literary hilarity. Some make you laugh out loud, others inspire a cheeky grin. Then there are those that siphon the all-knowing smile. (I also suggest reading the contributors’ interviews on the publisher’s website where the writers talk about what humour means to them, their influences, and the stories behind their stories.) 

By the time this book reaches you, dear reader, I would have lost count of how many times I have read the stories in these pages—I have already! And every time I revisit these tales, something new springs upon me: a metaphor, an allegory, a punchline that was lost on me upon my prior visit. (Who knows how many still smirk in plain sight?!) 

I had a hell lot of fun putting this book together. And I really, really hope it puts a deep scratch, if not a dent, on the halls of ‘serious’ literary pantheons. 

Ankit Raj Ojha is a poet, writer, editor, and translator from Bihar, India. His poems, short stories, essays, reviews, and academic articles are published in twenty countries. A PhD from IIT Roorkee, Ankit is an assistant professor of English with DHE, Haryana. He edits The Hooghly Review, has two poetry collections, and is a consulting editor with Routledge and Springer Nature.