There’s a few blogs out here that claim to discuss Pakistan and all things related to Pakistan, but what is unique about Pakistan Paindabad is that it is run and maintained by two Indians. Gauruv Sood and Mayank Austen Soofi are well known names in the Indian blogosphere but at Pakistan Paindabad they write themselves and invited others to write about what it means to be Pakistani. Bina Shah has done a wonderful post in this vein on what makes Pakistanis laugh:
These are things that nobody else in the world finds funny, but Pakistanis manage to derive a lot of amusement out of all of them. Perhaps it’s because Pakistanis possess a different funny gene than other people, but whatever it is, it guarantees a sense of humor that is unique to the nation. [...]…what makes Pakistanis laugh is a combination of whatever is surreal, farcical, comedo-tragic, and self-deprecating. This is a reflection of the nation we live in.
Very aptly summarized. They say that laughter is the best medicine, and for a nation that’s so gripped by all kinds of upheaval, we’ve often found solace in humor. Whether that means laughing at Nawas Sharif’s receding hairline, or making a laughing stalk of the national cricket team or the politico-social humor popularized by the likes of Anwar Maqsood, Moin Akhtar and Bushra Ansari, to name a few, our preferences in humor seem central to the purpose of some how lessoning the associated ignominy of our collective failures, whether as a cricket team, as a democracy, or society in general. But off late, it seems that even laughter as a medicine isn’t as curative as one would expect, as more and more Pakistanis are finding it harder to disagree without being disagreeable.
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