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Rhymes in our times

Photo: P.V. Sivakumar

SING A SONG Rhymes have taken a serious turn. They have moved beyond their happy word play

Did we really care about a catastrophic plague way back in time when we joyfully jumped around in circles singing the rhyme “Ring-a-ring-a-roses”? It was the thrill of just plopping down at the end of it and giggling… even the antic ipation of it kept us happy in our innocent little worlds.

Of late, though, a great deal of hullabaloo is made about the underlying meaning of rhymes and changing them to cosset children from these macabre verses. And one wonders if we’re going too far. Take for example the BBC’s recent attempt at verse on their children’s channel CBeebies: they made “Humpty Dumpty happy again”. Of course, when some people were up in arms against what they saw as an attempt at sanitising the rhyme, the BBC simply explained that they were only trying to be creative.

And by the way, till recently, we probably didn’t even notice that our nursery rhymes were macabre.

Like Sarita Hegde, mom of a 14-month old. “I’m a big nursery rhymes fan. I love them simply because they rhyme,” she says. “I think I love them for their repetitive nature. I sing them over and over again to my son. In fact, till, say five years ago, I never stopped to think how tragic they were; it never occurred to me,” she adds. Sarita believes that though most of the rhymes are glum, morose and even tragic, it is still a way to teach kids about the dangers they may face in life. “If you make everything happy, they’ll never know of the big bad world out there,” she reasons.

Some argue that rhymes were songs actually meant for adults — a subversive parallel world where unmentionables could be sung in a censored society. But we almost teach and learn these rhymes without looking into its deeper implications — it’s learnt by rote, it’s set to song, it’s accompanied by action.

One would like to believe they were meant to be nonsensical pointless rhymes. However, they lend themselves to diverse interpretations. (You may need a sense of humour, though, for that.) One could, if you were to take a long deep look at the rhymes, begin by just wondering how it was concluded that Humpty-Dumpty was an egg in the first place.

That’s where perhaps the fun lies. Rhymes have been used to talk of our times. There’s a rhyme for every season, though there may not be any “rhyme or reason” for it. A sampling: “It’s raining, it’s pouring/Oh s***, it’s global warming.”

Then there’s the Humpty-Dumpty inspired rhyme that did the e-mail rounds when IT major Satyam crashed: “Raju Raju sat on the wall, Raju Raju had a great fall/ Balance sheet died, shareholders cried/ Raju Raju made a great fraud.” (And one wouldn’t have missed the unmentionable pornographic versions, especially if you’re a regular on YouTube.)

Of course a school in America may have gone a wee bit too far when they taught “Baa baa rainbow sheep” so that they don’t sound racist!

“I thought nursery rhymes were gone with my time,” laughs Kamala Mukunda, teacher at the Centre for Learning, an alternate school in Bangalore where children don’t learn conventional rhymes, but are taught folk songs from all over India, set to simple tunes. The school does not consciously reject these rhymes, says Kamala. Just that they find an ample repertoire of Indian poems they can sing. “It’s kind of silly to change rhymes. If you don’t like it, leave it and take up something else…There’s so much more that a child needs to be protected from — senseless advertising and violence in cartoons, for instance.”

And she agrees that children seem to love stories of a morbid nature — maybe a reason why they do like these rhymes. “When they say ‘Tell me a story,’ make it a ghost story!... and among themselves, the gorier the story, the better,” she laughs. But if one were to teach it, one would have to take a look at it again, she sums up. “Rhymes and fairytales are also so full of stereotypes.”

Writer Anita Nair, who’s also penned children’s books, says of the BBC move: “It’s very silly… what makes these rhymes lovely is their subversive-ness. There’s a certain element of fun that comes from the not-so-sanitised world of kids. Children don’t see things as good as bad and take them at face value. I think one should allow children to be children.”

Shailaja Vishwanath, mother of a three-year-old and a communication trainer, observes that nursery rhymes are only a miniscule aspect of a child’s experience.

“They are bombarded by so many other things. But it makes sense to change rhymes for kids because this is their age of innocence.

I see no harm in cushioning them. I, for instance always found ‘Three blind mice’ to be a very horrible rhyme.” Her daughter isn’t influenced by the rhymes but she does relate to them as she puts words to tune, observes Shailaja.

One can only pray that a child’s mere attempt to learn language (which is what rhymes are about) doesn’t get drowned in political correctness. Or you will be listening to a whole new repertoire of happy rhymes where spiders and little girls are best friends.

 Terse verse

There are as many irreverent versions of Humpty Dumpty, which your child will gradually grow into and bump into by accident:

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall/All the king’s horses and all the king’s men/ Said, “Damn him ...he’s only an egg!!!”

Or the one that ends: “…and all the kings’ men/ Had scrambled eggs for breakfast again.”

And when they step into adolescence they will not miss this one: “Jack and Jill went up the hill, to have a little fun/Stupid Jill forgot the pill, and now they have a son.”

Adult parodies of nursery rhymes only get gorier: “Mary had a little lamb, her father shot it dead/And now it goes to school with her, between two chunks of bread.”

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