Humour That Saved Me

This post is part of Blogchatter’s A2Z Challenge 2026: H is for Humour That Saved Me.

If life is a dal, humour is the tadka. Without it, everything is technically nourishing but entirely tasteless. I learned this not from a book or a therapist, but from living – and from a father who laughed his way through everything life threw at him.

A Legacy Called Laughter

My dad was the happiest man I have ever known. Not a penny to his name by the world’s accounting, yet he carried an appetite for life that most wealthy people never manage. He was a mast maula in the truest sense – content, cheerful, and completely unbothered by what he did not have. At eighty-six, he would bristle if you dared call him eighty-six years old. He was, he insisted with complete conviction, eighty-six years young.

For people who thought too highly of themselves, he had a verdict he delivered with great satisfaction. “Good man, the lantern, small man, the mombatti.” Waah waah, Baji . I have used that line more times than I can count. It has never once failed me.

I was the youngest child and his pet. Of all his children, only I inherited what he carried – that stubborn, joyful, ek dum bindaas refusal to let life win. That inheritance has never left me, not even when life gave it every reason to go.

What Society Expected

When my husband passed away, the world had opinions. Loud ones. I was told my life was over. That I existed now only for my children. White clothes followed. There were expectations of evening sessions devoted entirely to grief. India, for all its colour and warmth, can be extraordinarily archaic about widowhood. The nakhra of it all – the rules, the rituals, the selective application of tradition – is another story entirely.

What broke through was my daughter. She was fifteen. One quiet day, she looked at me and asked- Are you going to dress like this forever? It was not a complaint. It was a question filled with anxiety. A fifteen-year-old should not carry that weight. I heard her immediately, chose colour again. I chose myself again.

The Philosophy of Choosing Happiness

Here is something I believe with absolute conviction. When you are sad, and you fill your ears with sad music, your eyes with tragic films, and your evenings with mournful conversations, you become sadder. Grief finds company and settles in deeper.

So I made a deliberate choice early. Only romantic comedies. Only lively music, stand-up comedy when the evenings felt too long and too quiet. I am a voracious consumer of intelligent humour- the kind that tickles the intellect before it reaches the stomach. Slapstick leaves me cold. But a sharp observation, a perfectly timed line, a comic who makes you think before you laugh – that is irresistible to me. My favourites are- Vir Das & Zakir Khan

This was not a denial. This was a survival strategy, carefully chosen and fiercely protected. Choose your inputs, and you choose your mood. It is really that simple.

Vodka, My Daughter, and Zero Dignity

My daughter is my best friend. We speak the same language – warm, irreverent, and completely affectionate. She has a particular talent for photographing me when I am entirely unaware. Mid-sentence, mid-bite, mid-thought, mid-snore too – she has already clicked and sent something to her friends. Our dog Vodka is frequently her accomplice. Between the two of them, I have very little dignity left and considerably more joy.

Every year on my birthday, she posts a photograph of us on Instagram for the world to see. The caption, which I now treasure more than most compliments I have ever received, informs her followers that whatever craziness they see in her is entirely inherited from me. She has taken my wit, sharpened it considerably, and now deploys it against me with impressive skill. I could not be prouder. We rib each other constantly. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is off-limits. The laughter between us is the most honest thing I know.

Laughter Is Not Lightness

People sometimes mistake a sense of humour for a lack of depth. They assume that someone who laughs easily has not suffered enough to be serious. I find this a profound misreading of how human beings actually work.

Some of the wittiest people I have known have carried the heaviest things. Laughter was not their escape. It was their equilibrium. I can smile through tears. I always could. Not because the tears do not matter, but because the smile matters. Both are true at the same time. This is not a contradiction. This is what a full life actually feels like.

I find humour in everything – in everyday absurdities, in the quirks of people around me, in my own forgetfulness, in a body that is no longer twenty-five and makes its opinions known loudly. I find romance in the everyday too. Both require the same quality of attention – a willingness to notice what is actually in front of you, rather than what you feared or expected to find.

The Second Half Laughs Differently

In the second half of life, humour shifts and deepens. You stop laughing at people. You start laughing with them – or better still, at the whole magnificent absurdity of being human. The situations that once felt catastrophic become, with enough distance, genuinely funny. The things that once embarrassed you become your best stories.

My father knew this instinctively. He never needed distance or perspective. He arrived already laughing. I am still catching up with him, but I am getting there.

What I Know For Certain

Humour did not fix anything. It did not bring anyone back. It did not erase the hard years or smooth over the losses. But it kept me present. It kept me connected – to my daughter, to my grandchildren, my friends, to my readers, and most importantly, to myself. It reminded me of the darkest evenings that I was still capable of delight.

And that, I have found, is enough to keep going.

So choose your inputs carefully. Choose the film that makes you laugh till your stomach hurts, the playlist that makes you want to dance in your kitchen. Choose the friend who makes you snort-laugh over chai. Protect your joy the way you protect everything else that matters.

Add the tadka every single day.

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