What would’ve Jaspal Bhatti said about his death?

One night, a few weeks ago, lacking any inspiration to write funny scenes I was supposed to submit to my writing partner the next day, I switched on my modem and directed my browser to YouTube hoping to find something entertaining enough to keep me away from work without having any guilt pangs. That night, after almost two decades, I rediscovered Flop Show.

Writing comedy is tough. Writing good comedy can be excruciating because a writer never knows whether the material produced is average or excellent or plain nonsense (jokes). Some fellow writers may disagree, but it has been my experience that when one produces something funny on paper, he or she can never be sure if the material will touch a chord with others. Over time one gets an idea of the themes that work and the ones that don’t; yet they never seem to know what will hit the bull’s eye.

Ultimately, it is the tragic truth that makes us laugh. Paradoxically, it is the tragic truth that we all like to avoid to be able to live our lives without losing our sanity. Every time I fly from Mumbai to Delhi, the airline crew teaches me how to tie my safety belt after every passenger is sitting with the seat belts on. Then, the safety crew informs me about the life jacket under my seat, in case we have to land on water, but knows fully well that there won’t be a chance of landing in water anywhere. The situation is tragic because despite all the safety belts and the life jackets, we are going to die if something wrong happens. This is exactly why the situation is funny. Everyone knows the truth but everyone likes to go through the motions of normalcy.  

Jaspal Bhatti made a career out of human tragedy. My first memory of Jaspal Bhatti dates back to 1988 when my father bought home a colour television. One day the television developed a snag – a darkish tint came over the picture quality. Since the television was still in its infancy it was covered by a warranty and one evening when I got home after playing with my friends, I found two engineers operating on the latest (and the youngest) member of our family.

I recall the time — it was quarter to six — accurately because by 6 O’clock the television had been fixed and the engineers wanted to check if it worked properly by switching it on and playing it for a few minutes. I switched on the power point and the first image that appeared — minus the darkish tint — was of Jaspal Bhatti. Ulta Pulta was just starting (Uuu-uuu-uuu-uuu-Ulta-poo-Poo-Poo-poo Pulta, Ulta hai, Pulta hai…) and I still recall the two engineers arguing whether they should sit and watch the entire 15-minute episode or whether they should tie up our little baby and get on with their next call of duty. Bhatti won the argument.

In a few minutes my mother brought the engineers some tea and the four of us watched an episode of Ulta Pulta where Bhatti plays a mechanic who dismantles a customer’s brand new scooter.
A few years later, Flop Show came on air and Bhatti became a household superstar. (The only person I can recall who became such an instant hit on TV with only a single episode was Shah Rukh Khan in Fauji.) Bhatti acted in all the 10 episodes of Flop Show and also ‘mis-directed’ them.

The night I rediscovered Flop Show and watched the 10 episodes back to back, I wondered why Bhatti was making me laugh even now. I think it was corruption. Bhatti made a career exposing corruption not just as a systematic failure but also as a sign of our moral decay, which is why I think Bhatti was never such a rage with whatever he did next. I recall a show called Full Tension, which did not stay on air for long and a video film called Shah Ji di advice which did reasonably well via the video parlour mode of film distribution, so popular in the 90s.

Essentially, Bhatti succeeded and failed for the same cause: Corruption. He was arguably the only comedian who could see something of a national character in our corrupt practices, which is why the 10 episodes of Flop Show will never appear out of date.
Bhatti was an electrical engineer and worked with the Punjab state electricity board before he gave it up to be a cartoonist for the Chandigarh-based daily, The Tribune.

In an interview to Shehkar Suman, he claimed ambiguously that he had to quit because the newspaper’s circulation was falling due to his cartoons. I have always believed (and never checked) that Bhatti must have been fired. In my opinion he could not have seen the average Indian as a helpless victim dealt an unfair hand by a corrupt system. The characters in Flop Show made us laugh because they were never shown as victims of corruption but simply human beings who find themselves disadvantaged because someone else got the idea first.

My favourite episode is the one in which Bhatti takes on corruption in the post doctoral studies in the decaying university set up. There is a PhD candidate (Vivek Shaque) who does household chores for his guide (played eloquently by Bhatti) because all he can successfully accomplish in the lab is make tea. Bhatti has no hopes for him until the day his wife sees a future husband in him for her sister, Sweety, who has just returned from London after a divorce. What follows is a successful rendition of the guru-shishya tradition with a cruel twist in the end.

When I heard of his death in a car crash, my first thought was a cruel one: What would Bhatti have thought of his own death? Would he have come up with a line like Powercut banane jaa rahe the, raaste mein transformer hi phuk gaya? (I am sorry it’s a bad joke and in bad taste perhaps. But as a one liner is life any better?)

Mayank Tewari is a writer