Cricketers as marasis

There’s self-deprecating humour, and then there’s other-deprecating humour. The former may lay bare deep insecurities, but it’s deemed acceptable because it hurts none; other-deprecating humour, however, can and will cause hurt and anger, especially if done in public.

Marasis — Punjab’s rustic comedians — indulge in other-deprecating humour; they make fun of people’s facial features, body shape, handicaps.

Where does humour lie? In prose and on the stage, it’s often found in exaggeration; in the world of marasis, humour lies in lampooning and deriding and mocking others, and often the frailties that they can’t do anything about — such as short stature or a limp or crooked teeth.

Kamran Akmal, the former Pakistan cricketer, was in the role of a marasi when he cracked a 12 o’clock joke about Arshdeep Singh, the India and Punjab pace bowler, when India played Pakistan in the T20 World Cup in New York.

Now, we’ve all heard such jokes — Sikh friends have related these with relish, too. There is no one rule that fits all situations of humour, but such jokes are often alright among friends in a private sphere; but in public, and coming from a stranger, such jokes become offensive — an other-deprecating taunt likely to cause anger.

Cricketers learn to grow a thick skin, for they’ve heard all sorts of abuse from their opponents. Such harsh and cruel words, though, are often spoken in the heat of the moment, on the field of play. When a cricketer-analyst passes inappropriate jokes on live television, it’s nothing but crass jeering, betraying a lack of sensitivity and good taste.

But then, in a region — including India and Pakistan — where an amputee could be referred to as tunda, a man with a squint called bhainga to his face, and a dark-skinned person nicknamed kalu, it would be too much to expect a man like Akmal to be oversensitive. Add to it the state-sponsored hate for the minorities in Pakistani schoolbooks, and you can well believe that Akmal is a victim, too, and what he said about Arshdeep was quite inevitable.

Maybe it’s because we in Punjab have similar marasi/comedian culture, our own Navjot Singh Sidhu, humour king on TV, can laugh at people’s appearance on reality shows. A few years ago, he had this to say about the Bangladeshi team: “Jo kangal, behal Bangladesh tha, woh khushhaal aur maalamaal…” This caused resentment in Bangladesh, as did his comment likening the team to “cockroaches” that can’t fly. Sidhu’s coarse humour may have raised some laughs, but such humour is clearly offensive and inappropriate. Between crass humour and extreme political correctness, there’s much territory on which humour can flourish — middle ground that Akmal and Sidhu can occupy, removing their marasi hats. Giving up boorishness isn’t a bad idea.

Pandya’s story

When Hardik met Natasa, sparks flew; he liked her face, she liked his style, and love blossomed. It was 2018, and in 2020, they were married — cricketer Hardik Pandya and Natasa Stankovic, an actress and model from Serbia.

But in between was 2019, too, when Pandya put his foot in the mouth in a big way — in a TV interview, he boasted about his adventures with multiple women, saying this about his method of picking them up: “At a party, my parents asked me, ‘Achcha tera wala (women) kaun sa hai,’ so I said, ‘Yeh, yeh, yeh (pointing out women)’… And they were like ‘waah, proud of you beta!’”

“I like to watch and observe how they move,” Pandya said, adding that he paid particular attention to “the backside”. Pandya and KL Rahul — also part of the interview, but much more restrained — were criticised for being misogynists. It could be argued that Pandya didn’t bring forth his misogyny — dislike for women; it was philogyny — love for women, instead. But it was peppered with deep contempt for them — due to their easy availability, added to his upbringing in a patriarchal society.

Anyone who has covered cricket tours would testify that hundreds of young women practically throw themselves on cricketers all the time; during the IPL parties in Lalit Modi’s era, stories of casual after-match trysts were legion. If the young Pandya, among others, succumbed to temptation, how much can he be blamed?

As for him and Natasa, love seems to have soured; she got married to him despite his crassness. Speculation now centres round how much of his wealth would she be entitled to if they get divorced — a sordid end to love.