Sense of humor and Handwriting- A tribute to Jaspal Bhatti

When i heard the news about untimely demise of Jaspal Bhatti first , i thought it is one of the false news played by the man known for his onscreen comedy and pranks. Alas, it was not to be true.

I remember the times during the childhood when we used to defer going to playground (yes, we had  lots of them then) to watch his satirical show- Flop Show highlighting common man's problem with a simple dose of humour. That show is a lot relevant now probably more than it was then. His humour touched everyone alike- be it kids or adults,or aunts, young or old, male or female. There was another show called as Ulta-Pulta.  It was quite common for the kids then to cajole their parents into watching TV for additional half-an-hour to watch these shows. He was an anti-corruption crusader even at the time when it was not fashionable to talk about/against corruption in India.
His straight-faced humour was a need of the hour in today's times when the humour tends to be expressed more digitally by emoticons and smileys than in person.

A dose of humour gives us simple pleasures in life but the topic of understanding humour is quite complex in itself as Mark Twain had once said, “Studying humor is like dissecting a frog — you may know a lot but you end up with a dead frog.”  My intention here is to write a few lines as a tribute to a man who made us smile no matter what was going on in our lives.

Sense of humour:
Oxford dictionary define humour as "the quality of being amusing or comic, especially as expressed in literature or speech". Having humour can be thought of as a trait of being funny. Humour does have distinct characteristics but the most of basic of them would be the ability to make others laugh and secondly, the ability to see the amusing side in the situations of life. There is also an interesting characteristic of ability to laugh at self.

Ingredients of humour and their association with Handwriting:
What kind of clues can one's handwriting give on the humour in one's personality ? Here, i would like to point some direct and indirect references.

Handwriting analysis is a lot about deciphering the strokes that makes the various components of the handwriting. Directly speaking- the presence of a "Wavy" t-bar or the "wavy" beginning of strokes depict the presence of humour in one's personality.

Indirectly speaking, humour can be safely treated as a creative activity . The reason i say it as a creative activity is because there is a sort of unexpectedness associated with humour that make the people to laugh. The unexpectedness can be attributed to creative potential of the person. Creativity is an intense topic in itself and handwriting gives some good clues about creative thinking. It is usually associated with the different forms of thinking such as Cumulative thinking (shown in the handwriting with letters "m" and "n" having flat or curvy tops), in which a person stack facts upon fact and takes its own time to arrive at a conclusion. Such form of thinking can lead to creative responses as the person tends to think through the situations. Most of the comedians dealing with dead-pan comedy may belong to this category. Other type of thinking patters could be Comprehensive thinking pattern (shown in the handwriting with sharp, pointed tops at "m" and "n") in which a person thinks a rapid pace and gets back with funny one liners and quick responses to the situations.

Sarcasm is another useful ingredient of humour. Sarcasm is usually treated as a negative trait but also often consists of double meaning of whatever is said. It is often used in generating humour. Most of the humour generated at the people holding high offices (Politicians etc.) has sarcasm as a key trait.
Sarcasm can be seen in handwriting in the sharp pointed "t" bars.

Imagination is another important ingredient of humour. Most of the humourists have very high degree of imagination and they have an ability to think the un-obvious and make a statement which nobody can even think of. This trait is usually seen in the Stand-up comedians. People with imagination can see the situations with a wider horizons. Tina Seelig in her this class on creativity even noted that "Jokes are interesting because the frame switches in the middle of the it" and that is largely because of one's imagination.
Imagination in handwriting can be revealed by large and wide lower loops in the letters "y", "g" and "j".

Apart of these traits, most humourists have the ability to laugh at themselves. And the people who have the ability to laugh at their own expense are not sensitive to criticism i.e. they just take the jokes on themselves in their stride and not take it personally. Sensitiveness to criticism can be noted in one's handwriting in letter "d" or "t" having looped stem. People having this trait are unlikely to have the ability to laugh at themselves.

 Probably, there's a lot more around Handwriting and humour that could be explored than the above glimpse but i will temporarily stop here.

Not sure home many of these traits would Jaspal Bhatti's handwriting have as  i have not see his anytime but I had recently started following Jaspal Bhatti on twitter and found that he had this knack of seeing humor in the serious news and he did tweeted some hilarious ones. Alas, there wont be next tweet coming anymore.

RIP Jaspal Bhatti!

Image Source:
 http://indiatoday.intoday.in
Cartoon Source:
Courtesy: Sudhir Tailang
https://twitter.com/i/#!/sudhirtailang/media/slideshow?url=pic.twitter.com%2FANH3n5Y1