[DAWN] IN the midst of the recent deadly heatwave in Sindh, our minister for climate change, Mushahidullah Khan, announced that coal-fired power plants in the Indian state of Rajasthan were partly to blame. The claim produced incredulity, rolled eyes, and a few LOLs on social media. Normally such a statement would have made me laugh. But the scale of the tragedy -- not only the toll of the heatwave, but also the inept governance, scapegoating, class inequality that it highlighted -- seemed to have stripped my sense of humour.I anticipated others would mock the minister's conspiracy theorising and confused science. I expected comic video clips and puns about hot air to follow. Tongue-in-cheek reactions to the water car, to 'a degree is a degree', and to the recent spy pigeon had increased my expectations. But the jokes didn't come -- at least in the real and virtual circles I inhabit. Perhaps it was too hot. Perhaps people were fasting. Perhaps there's nothing funny about more than 1,000 people dying in the heat while politicians play an absurd blame game.
The muted response did make me wonder whether we are starting to lose our sense of humour about our country. What would it mean if we as a nation lost the ability to laugh at our foibles?