Stupid Juha = Suppandi

This week’s Juha reading was much different from last week’s reading.  Juha particularly took a ‘smart guy’ approach last week whereas this week he took on roles that either made fun of the society or that made him a laughing stock.  This is consistent with the author’s claim of Juha being a flexible role.  Juha is whoever the story teller wants him to be.  This week, Juha was made fun of whereas last week he was making fun of someone else.  It is this versatility in his character role that, in my opinion, makes him a common humor figure in the Arabic countries.

In every other tale in the Naïveté and stupidity chapter, I saw myself laughing at the innocent stupidity of the character. While the chapter achieved its goal, I was happy that I wasn’t that stupid (or am I?) to do things like Juha in some of the tales; the bottle of oil story for instance. I see this as a shadow effect of Schedenfreude.

My favorite chapter for this week’s reading was ‘Cunning and resource’.  Many of the stories in this chapter were sensible and had a wonderful play of words.  The plot of each of these stories were well crafted, though as a 19 year old I could see the end coming.  My favorite story was that of the pot.  It was really well crafted and this kind of craftiness is what I would relate with an ancient Shaikh character.

The chapter on Naïveté and stupidity reminded me of another character in the very same comic book that I first read about Nasreddin Hodja (Juha).  The stupid character is called Suppandi and many of the stories that were outlined in this book with Juha playing the central role was played by Suppandi in the comic book.  Suppandi was a servant to a wealthy land owner and he made the dumbest decisions and spoke as if he had no clue how things around him worked.  One story that I remember very well about Suppandi and that was in this book was that of the donkey stealing Juha’s robe.  Juha takes the donkey’s saddle and tells the donkey that he won’t return the saddle unless the donkey returns his cloak.  It is his innocence that is funny here.  He thinks that the saddle and the cloak are clothing equivalents and hence he is shaming the donkey by taking away its saddle.

Some stories annoyed me as they were too silly to even imagine someone behave that way. But a majority of the stories were fun to read as they were light and relatable.