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help. A Jaina couple... it is impossible for them to say what the joke says. "You know why I am knocking," cries Harry, "but you should see with what!" No Indian will say that. It is just impossible.
So I told Nirvano, "Change the names. Put in some Christian names"... because Jews are being hit so much. And I love them. Half of my sannyasins are Jews, and most of them are my sannyasins because I am the only person who loves Jewish jokes. They have a flavor which is their own. Countries like India are very serious. To tell a joke... Indians will feel very much hurt, they are such a repressed people. Here there are a few of my old friends who are Jainas. I told Nirvano, "Do you want them also to go?" Hearing the joke about Halvabhai and Mevabhai, then they are not going to stay!
The people who are translating my books from English to Hindi continuously send me notes: "What to do about the jokes?" And the people who are translating my Hindi books into English -- they again and again ask me, "What to do with the poetry?"
So I tell them, "If you can manage, translate the poetry into prose. If you cannot, then just leave it out." And to the people who are translating from English to Hindi I say simply, "You cannot do anything except leave out those jokes." Indians will get absolutely mad -- they are already mad about me. Such a seriousness has been a long sickness, a wound that has not healed.
Jews have certainly proved their mettle. In all their agony they have maintained their laughter, they have not lost it. But it is a strange psychology that the people who are in suffering will always love laughter. That gives at least some time to forget the misery. People who have lived peacefully, with no suffering, don't know what laughter is.
I have been thinking many times that I should speak on the psychology of jokes. It has so many implications, why a certain joke is a joke and why it arose; who were the people, who must have been the people who managed that joke? In what background has the joke flowered, and was it refined? -- because it is centuries of work. A single joke can be traced back for centuries, and you will find little differences
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