When a joke is upset at being called a joke

As if it wasn't enough that former Pakistani generals were scoffing at our Army on television every night even as warmongering anchors frothed at the mouth (yes, the same Pakistani army that lost the 1971 war and half their nation).

As if it wasn't enough that our prime minister was speaking of yoga even as our biggest air base was under siege.

As if it wasn't enough that our home minister had no clue of what was happening at home.

As if it wasn't enough that Rohit Sharma yet again cemented his place in the Indian cricket team for just long enough to do badly in before scoring brilliantly, yet again.

As if it wasn't enough that two of our most beloved stars reunited 20 years after an iconic romance that defined every 40-something's life to make a film about car crashes and renegade dons living in Bulgaria.

There comes news that a joke is upset about being called a joke.

Yes, Gurmeet Ram Rahim jokes by Kiku Sharda have apparently offended the guru's followers to such an extent that he was sent to judicial custody for daring to laugh at the 48-year-old chief of the Dera Sacha Sauda sect whose flashy clothes are surely visible even from the Millennium Falcon and whose movies make Pahlaj Nihalani look like the high priest of good taste.

Serves us right.

In every sphere of life, we have settled for the second best, for the almost jokes.

In Bollywood, we routinely reward nonsensical films by botoxed, stretched, stitched together 50-year-olds with no sense of plot or point.

In cricket, we revere overpaid and overfed players who believe they are invincible.

In politics, we allow one man to travel the world in search of his next best friend and his next shirt colour and allow another to absent himself from public life for days on end without questioning his activities.

We have outsourced our humour to the utterly tasteless Kapil Sharma.

We have allowed our politics to be run by a collection of ageing men whose idea of a great time is to exercise in shorts at an unearthly hour.

We have ensured our economy is fit to produce jobs only for security guards.

We have reduced scholarship to file-snatching of long dead freedom fighters and history to a collection of conspiracy theories.

We have made Subramanian Swamy a protected species and those who eat what they want fair game.

We have made a sport of our politics and politics of our sport.

We have ensured that no Muslims can speak their minds again - not even to quote their Hindu wives.

We have made a joke of ourselves.

Yet, no one is laughing.

And why should they when the biggest debate in the nation is whether an overweight man who dresses as a woman for laughs can laugh at an overweight man whose clothes are lit with enough electricity to power a small village.