Why Jaspal Bhatti endures: ‘His work makes you laugh and think but it makes you sad too’

Whenever there are reports of an avoidable bout of suffering visited upon the average Indian (corruption, Byzantine bureaucracy, medical negligence), the question inevitably arises: what would Jaspal Bhatti do?

He would make you laugh, of course. But he would make you think too – about the innumerable pathways of crookedness, the absurdity that is a byproduct of indifference, the culpability of bystanders.

A satirist with a sharp political sensibility, Bhatti firmly believed that laughter is the medicine for life’s bitter truths – medicine that needs to be swallowed with eyes wide open.

Through skits that were initially performed at public gatherings and later television shows and films, Bhatti skewered the apathy that afflicts the Indian middle class, which seems to revel in the belief that nothing will change because “we are like this only”.

Bhatti was a master of his material, writing, directing and starring in Flop Show for Doordarshan in 1989, followed by other serials, including Full Tension.

Bhatti’s first film, the Punjabi-language Mahaul Theek Hai, was released in 1999. When he died in a road accident in 2012, at the age of 57, he had completed his second feature Power Cut, starring his son Jasraj Singh Bhatti.

Jaspal Bhatti died the day before the film was released. He was posthumously honoured with a Padma Bhushan in 2013.

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