Mark Twain once said ~ “Humour is the great thing, the saving thing after all. The minute it crops up, all our harnesses yield, all our irritations, and resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.” Indeed, humour is one of the most important things in our everyday life. A good hearty laugh relieves physical tension and stress, leaving muscles relaxed for up to 45 minutes after. It is regarded as life’s essential spice, and serves as a profound source of joy and relief. Every human has an innate sense of humour.

Time magazine named Albert Einstein as its Man of the 20th century and Mahatma Gandhi as joint runner-up with Franklin D Roosevelt. Einstein was widely recognised not only as an exceptionally brilliant scientist but, according to Nobel physics laureate Werner Heisenberg, he had also a great sense of humour. Einstein had a genetic condition that made his hair look untamed, which has been documented in his photos in his lifetime. He was once scheduled to deliver a speech at Princeton on General Relativity. He started his speech with the sentence: “I suppose you think that if I know so much about gravity, why can’t I get my hair to lie down?” Another time during a lecture, he had written a number of equations on the blackboard.

A graduate student, with much hesitation, pointed out to Einstein that there might be a mistake in the equation. Einstein looked at that equation, rubbed his jaw for a second and said, “You are absolutely right. Oh well I’m no Einstein.” Once an American journalist asked the Mahatma, “Mr. Gandhi, do you have a sense of humour?” He looked at him for a while and replied, “If I had no sense of hu – mour I would have committed suicide a long time ago!” In fact, he was funny and was fond of wordplay and witticisms. One never had a dull moment with him. With children he joked like a child, with young people, he was a young man, with old people he........

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