The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing

Guru Buster had been determined to keep his regular early morning appointment.

*   *   *

Dr. Jha passed several other groups on the wide lawn that lay to the left of Rajpath: the first was a ladies’ yoga session, the supple participants arching their backs so that they looked like giant snails. Next, five bare- chested south Indian men were practicing the ancient Keralan martial art of Kalaripayat, the sound of their long wooden staves clattering against one another sounded like drumbeats. And finally, members of the local chapter of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) were conducting their morning drill in Hitler Youth-style khaki uniforms.

In the past, Dr. Jha had challenged the RSS’s right to gather on Rajpath; in his view, the group presented a clear threat to public law and order no matter how much social work it carried out. The swayamsevaks had not taken kindly to his protests, and on a number of occasions there had been heated exchanges between them. But this morning the Guru Buster passed the ‘hate-mongering fascists’, as he had often referred to them, without incident.

A quarter of a mile farther on, in the shadow of a jamun tree, four men dressed for exercise were standing in a circle.

As Dr. Jha approached them, they raised their arms and stretched toward the sky. An instructor’s voice called out a command and they lowered their hands to their hips. Then all but one of the men tilted their heads back and began to laugh. Not a titter, chortle or snigger: they ejaculated heehaws like drunken men.

For ten seconds, they shook with infectious mirth, going abruptly silent as if the joke that had caused their collective amusement had suddenly lost its appeal. The instructor’s voice boomed out again and, with varying degrees of success and groans of discomfort, the men bent forward to touch their toes. Then they flung their arms wide and burst into another bout of joyful hysterics.

“Welcome, Dr. Sahib!” said the beaming instructor, Professor Pandey, who was in his late fifties. He had a big face surmounted by a shock of white hair partially stained yellow from smoking a pipe. “Welcome, welcome, welcome! We’re doing our warm-up! Join us!”

Dr. Jha, who had been a member of the Rajpath Laughing Club for two years, greeted the other men before taking his place in the circle.

“Unfortunately, there are only a few of us present today because so many people are away on holiday,” continued Professor Pandey.

The Laughing Club was usually attended by at least a dozen regulars. Their morning sessions were always noisy and rambunctious and there had been complaints from some of the other exercise groups, which was why they gathered so far down Rajpath.

“Now that we’re all assembled presently and correctly, good morning to you all!” said Professor Pandey.

“Good morning!” chorused the group.

“I’m delighted to see you, gentlemen!” The instructor carried on, grinning as he spoke. “First order of the day, we have a newcomer. Allow me to introduce Mr. Shivraj Sharma. Please make him welcome.”

“Good morning!” chorused the others with a round of applause.

“Mr. Sharma, what is your profession, please?” asked Professor Pandey, addressing the distinguished, middle-aged gentleman in the purple tracksuit.

“I’m a senior archaeologist with the Survey of India,” he answered haughtily.

“Very good, Mr. Sharma,” Professor Pandey said, smiling, as if he were talking to a child who had correctly recited his twelve-times table. “Now, you must know that here at the Laughing Club, we do laughter therapy. It’s a really wonderful approach that involves exercise and breathing as well as laughter, which is good for the heart and the soul. And what are we without heart and soul?”

There was a collective “Nothing!” from everyone except Mr. Sharma.

“Exactly! The ultimate goal of laughter therapy is to bring about world peace. People anywhere belonging to any culture can laugh. Laughter is the common language we all share. So how can we bring world peace through laughter? Very simple! When you laugh…”

Here the other men joined in again, chorusing: “You change. And when you change, the whole world changes with you!”

“Very good, very good, very good!” exclaimed Professor Pandey, addressing each part of the circle in turn. “So, Mr. Sharma, do you know what a jester is?”

Before the archaeologist could answer, the instructor continued: “He is a comedian and therefore laughs loudest of all. So let us now do jester laughter. On the count of three. One, two…”

On three, Professor Pandey pointed at the man opposite him in the circle, as if he had just told the funniest joke the world had ever heard, and started giggling feverishly.

The other men mimicked him, staggering about like intoxicated teenagers while holding their hands over their mouths.

Sharma tried his best to join in but looked awkward and self-conscious.

“Ho ho, ha-ha-ha! Ho ho, ha-ha-ha!” sang the group at the end of the Jester Exercise, doing a little jig and clapping their hands together.

“Very good, very good, very good!” cried Professor Pandey. “Next, Gibberish Exercise! What is gibberish, Mr. Sharma?”

The newcomer’s scowl suggested he was thinking: “Everything that comes out of your mouth!” But again Professor Pandey answered for him. “Gibberish is nonsense,” he said. “What infants speak.” He grinned again. “So let us now pretend we are two years old again.”

Professor Pandey spent the next minute uttering embarrassing baby noises while swinging his arms around him like a windmill.

More exercises followed: Silent Laughter (which involved puffing out their cheeks, holding their fingers over their lips, wheezing like old bellows and pumping their shoulders up and down) and finally the Chicken.

“Ho ho, ha-ha-ha! Very good, very good, very good!”

At the conclusion of the session, which lasted thirty minutes, Professor Pandey invited anyone with a funny joke to share it with the rest of the group.

“Strictly no non-veg jokes, thank you very much!” he said. “Nothing you wouldn’t tell your nani-ji!”

“But, Pandey Sahib, my nani-ji is telling the dirtiest jokes of all!” cried out Mr. Karat, one of the other regulars, who could do an alarmingly realistic chicken impersonation.

This comment provoked more laughter – genuine, natural and wholly spontaneous laughter, that is. And then another regular, Mr. Gupta, announced that he had heard a cracker the night before.

“Manager asked a Sardar-ji at an interview: ‘Can you spell a word that has more than five letters in it?’ Sardar replies: ‘P-O-S-T-B-O-X’.”

Professor Pandey followed this up with a knock-knock joke.

“Knock, knock,” he said.

“Who’s there?”

“Bunty.”

“Bunty who?”

“Bunty,” repeated Pandey with a giggle.

“Bunty who?” the others said, prompting him again.

But the professor could not answer. Like Uncle Albert in Mary Poppins, laughter had got the better of him.

“Really, Professor Pandey, you must finish your joke. Otherwise what is the point?” said Mr. Karat, smiling. But then he, too, erupted into a fit of giggles.

Dr. Jha and Mr. Gupta followed suit, chortling like little girls.

This time, however, it was different; this time they were unable to stop.

“I… I… can’t control my… myself!” Professor Pandey declared through his laughter. “And I… I can’t move my feet!”

Dr. Jha said he felt rooted to the spot as well. To their alarm, Karat and Gupta felt the same. They all looked down at the ground, trying to ascertain what was holding them in place. As they did so, a mist started to form around their ankles. Soon, it blanketed the earth, lapping up around their shins.

Only Sharma was not affected by what was happening. But he dared not shift from his position. The stray