Quite funnily, someone who seldom bothers to laugh is referred to as ‘laughing boy’ in English (well, even the wittiest stuff fails to tickle his or her funny bone!) - yet another example why some, in a clichéd manner, choose to call the international language a crazy one.

Jokes are cracked to raise a laugh. Crack some rib-tickling jokes and some will laugh till they cry, others manage to force a smile and there are still those — laughing boys — who sport an air, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, that suggests more grumpiness than spontaneous participation in collective hilarity.

Hergé, the famous creator of famed and fabulous cartoon series, Tintin, has an opulent laughing boy in the book Flight 714. Curiously, the owner of the Boeing does not laugh at all. Nonetheless, in the course of certain flight, something hilarious takes place and the usually gloomy Boeing owner unusually ends up bursting into peals of laughter and gets flabbergasted at such bizarre movements and sounds of his lips.

Lo and behold! The funny incident has a recurring effect on the melancholic millionaire and he laughs a second time and this time round, he gets scared at the comportment of his unruly lips and says to himself, ‘something is terribly amiss inside of my head, and if I laugh once more, I will need to consult a doctor!’ Well, the doctor might suggest laughter as the best medicine, but not all feel like to take it, seemingly!

While one tends to side with the idea that laughing boys exist only in fictional books and films, they are no rarity in society. I guess politics, for instance, is full of laughing boys. No harm intended, but have you ever seen PM Koirala laugh or smile: on TV, on printed press or in real? No doubt, he is one of the greatest laughing boys of our times.

Just visualise the heads of other political parties and you will swiftly jump to an ineluctable conclusion: politics might be the last refuge of the scoundrels, but so is it of laughing boys. That these big cheeses are going through an acid test of national politics (and should not laugh recklessly) is a different matter altogether. Curiously, all these laughing boys know how to do one thing well: laugh all the way to the bank. Now don’t say you are not laughing!