When Laughter Opens the Locked Door

Humour can make a difficult truth easier to hear, but it can also become a weapon. In today's 'From the Silence Within' column, Santosh Nair reflects on laughter, authority, ego and what happens when people around us become too careful to joke.

Imagine a large room where everyone is sitting straight. At the far end is the most powerful person in the room. People choose their words carefully. Nobody wants to say the wrong thing. Then someone makes a gentle joke about the very problem everyone has been afraid to mention. For a second there is silence. Then the powerful person smiles. Others laugh. The room changes. Nothing outside has changed. The chairs are the same, the positions are the same, the problem is still there. Yet a door has opened. A truth that could not enter dressed as criticism has quietly walked in wearing laughter. Laughter can make even the powerful listen.

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When humour becomes a safe passage for truth

Human beings have known this for centuries. Courts had jesters, villages had storytellers, theatre had satire and ordinary families had that one person who could say the difficult thing with a smile. Their humour was not merely entertainment. Sometimes it was a safe passage for truth. A direct accusation immediately makes the mind raise its shield. Humour can slip beneath that shield because, for one moment, the person being........

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