So you think that’s funny?

Why does comedy so often involve human suffering? People slip on banana skins. They act stupid. Outrageous things happen to them. And we laugh.

Are we monsters? Do we relish the suffering of others?

Or is laughter a self-defence mechanism? Instead of being a sign of depravity, it’s a way of coping with living in a world that is profoundly and shockingly unsympathetic to human existence.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that we laugh till we cry; that our laughter comes with tears. If we didn’t laugh at misfortune, we’d have to sob instead.

It seems fitting that my first novel, The Yoga Sutras, was a comedy. It reflects an unconscious inability to treat myself seriously as a writer, even though my writing is terribly serious to me - a matter of life and death.

So by all means laugh at my jokes. But please don’t laugh at my ideas, because I would hate that. It’s probably what a writer fears most, after obscurity. That's the greatest fear. To be ignored would be horrible. So awful I might have to laugh.