"What do you expect, the Comedian's dead"

After watching "Watchmen" in Hyderabad, I was going home in an autorickshaw. We were driving by Lumbini park and there was a horde of reporters with cameras over there. It looked like they were waiting for some politician or someone big to show up. The auto driver remarked, "That crowd over there, do you think there was another bomb blast or threat?" and burst out laughing. I couldn't help laughing either. Lumbini park, in case you didn't know, was the location of one of the three bomb blasts that rocked Hyderabad a couple of years ago. It was bizzare that both of us were laughing about a scenario that was entirely possible and not really funny. But then again, that's Indians. I mentioned this a while ago that Indian humor is very broad. It's un-PC and it takes on every topic under the sky. If you watch Indian movies, you'll find jokes about politics and politicians, about AIDS and cancer, about death and dying, about debilitating diseases, physical handicaps, mental retardation, poverty, religion (and by that I mean all religions, Islam, Christianity and most of all Hinduism) everything. No topic is really taboo. So with that in mind, I hope you'll excuse the bizzare laughter.

The title connection here of course is the character of the Comedian. Without spoiling anything, the Comedian is an ironically named character in the Watchmen universe who finds humour in the dark nature of the world around him. And when the book starts, with his killing, another character remarks that there are fewer laughs in the world because "the Comedian's dead".