IITians churn out a new original: Humour

Sitting in a lecture on condensed matter, Vaibhav Devanathan (21) thinks of a quip: Sachin Tendulkar — reducing the number of atheists in India since 1989. He quickly notes it down to update it on his website www.lol-land.in.

Sitting in a lecture on condensed matter, Vaibhav Devanathan (21) thinks of a quip: Sachin Tendulkar — reducing the number of atheists in India since 1989. He quickly notes it down to update it on his website www.lol-land.in.

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Last year, three students of the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B) got together to make a venture out of their love for humour. They set up a website of Indian humour and generated their own content.

“Every-day Indian life has a lot of humour in it, but there are no websites dedicated to it,” said Devanathan, who manages content on the site. “We were inspired by everything about the Indian way of life, from Mithun Chakraborty to bad movies to Sachin Tendulkar.”

Though the site is run by five students, the content is generated by about 10 IITians who take time away from their thermodynamics and analog devices to write articles and make videos for the website.

“It has potential and we are going to develop it into a long-term venture, not just a college hobby. We want to give people their daily fix of humour,” said webmaster Mayank Singhal, who formats the website.

Over the past year, the site has got an average of 1,000 visitors a day.

The team is now planning to provide content to publications.