G Sampath&rsquo;s debut book, How To Make Enemies And Offend People is a dummy&rsquo;s guide to what not to say to people you plan to keep in touch with, or to Arnab Goswami if you bumpu00a0into him. <img alt="" src="http://images.mid-day.com/2013/nov/G-Sampath.jpg" style="width: 500px; height: 398px;" /> G Sampath believes that humour cannot be politically correct and neutral Satire and wit in hand, Sampath ponders on the possibility of Goswami as the PM (because &ldquo;He is the only person...who can be more outrage than outrage itself&rdquo;), Sachin Tendulkar&rsquo;s murky life and why Ajay Devgn&rsquo;s nipples, well, seriously offend him every time he glances at the billboard. There&rsquo;s also his wife who hides their TV remote control in the refrigerator and his excruciatingly painful break-up with his bank. On a serious note, though, Sampath admits that something really has to elicit a strong emotion from him - anger, humour, even despondence - for him to sit and write about it. &ldquo;I am a very high-strung person, so the only way I can process what&rsquo;s happening around me is by writing. Having said that, I don&rsquo;t sit and filter when I am writing satire - humour cannot be politically balanced and neutral.&rdquo; It comes as a surprise, then, when he admits to having toned down the piece on Tendulkar. Chary on offending a national icon? &ldquo;My original version was more scathing, and I wasn&rsquo;t happy with the feedback I received, which asked me tone it down. Then it came to me that it is easy to make fun of a person than it is of his work.&rdquo; Sampath says that over time, we have become more protective of our public personalities. &ldquo;We are more regressive. We can make fun of a certain bearded man with a turban, but I&rsquo;d like to see whether we will make fun of a certain other bearded man if he comes in power. The bar is set really low.&rdquo; Humour in India, adds Sampath, needs to go beyond the &ldquo;usual stabs on stereotypes, cricket, Bollywood, shit, sex and peeing.&rdquo; &ldquo;I&rsquo;d like to see people take a risk, the bar&rsquo;s set really low for now.&rdquo; The risk, he elaborates, is when you offend people in power. &ldquo;When you&rsquo;re ready to be critical of the powerful, that&rsquo;s humour. Humour is a vocation, if you take it seriously as an art, it has a component of critique, much like Mark Twain&rsquo;s works, which have an element of commentary on society. That&rsquo;s the humour which adds value,&rdquo; he adds. And what offends him the most? &ldquo;A lot of things - noise, the way people elbow around in queues and censorship of any kind. That really gets my goat.&rdquo; <img alt="" src="http://images.mid-day.com/2013/nov/Sampath-book.jpg" style="width: 300px; height: 279px;" /> How To Make Enemies And Offend People G Sampath Rs 399 Published by Penguin Books Indiau00a0

Call it, maybe?

G Sampath, whose debut book is everything you need to offend people around you, feels that good humour is a vocation and not chary of offending the powerful

'We are herding more sacred cows by the day'

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'We are herding more sacred cows by the day'

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