Not child's play....certainly!

With my 8 month old little wonder around me, it seems but natural to start singing and saying aloud nursery rhymes simply to get her attention and get her to stare at the myraid expressions on my face. Of course the nursery rhymes had to be coaxed out of the closet realms of my mind, sometimes I managed to get the few lines intact, sometimes I only could manage to spew a line or two. But it was only when I got all the lines and said it aloud, did I realize the actual literal horror of it all! Nursery rhymes, those lines that our folks made us repeat in front of relatives, friends and sometimes even strangers, are in fact replete with violence and some are on the verge of being quite religiously jingoistic. Take for instance a supposed nursery rhyme hiding under the guise of a lullaby as well, goes like this "Rock a bye baby, on the treetop, when the wind blows, the cradle will rock, when the bough  breaks, the cradle will fall, and down will come baby, cradle and all." The implication is simple enough, the baby will fall, quite a scary prospect!

Then there is the most famous rhyme that school children love to hold hands and circle around, "Ring around the rosies, pocket ful of posies, ashes ashes we all fall down/ hush-hush-we all tumble down", here to the tumble down refers to death. Not many people know that this particular rhyme has a tragic link to the Great London Plague and the "ashes-ashes" bit and the "tumble down" is a blatant euphemism for death. Similarly the fairly popular nursery rhyme, "Humpty Dumpty" who is shown to be an egg shaped freak is gingerly sitting on a wall and he falls and possibly ends up breaking his bones in such a manner that he cannot be restored to his normal self ever again, and even the powers to be read 'the kings men' could not put him back again. But the one that truly got me to sit up and take note was "Goosey Goosey Gander, where shall I wander, upstairs, downstairs and in my lady's chamber, there I met an old man who wouldnt say his prayers, I took him by the left leg and threw him down the stairs!" This one simply implies that anyone who doesnt pray is bound to have unpleasant things happening to them. 

The 'Jack and Jill' rhyme is also malevolent, with Jack hurting his head and Jill somehow managing to tumble all the way down the hill, definitely a rhyme that overwhelmingly evokes quite a violent imagery!The old woman rhyme is equally disturbing, "There was an old woman who lived in a shoe, she had so many children she didnt know what to do, she gave them some broth, without any bread, and whipped them all soundly and sent them to bed" Wow, this woman seems to be quite the paragon of evil motherhood! She whips her kids, she has no clue what to do with them...!! It is no wonder then that British researchers even pegged some nursery rhymes as being more violent than the violence that is shown on the television! 

Given all this baggage behind me, I dont mind the quizzical looks people give me when I sing popular kiddie numbers from bollywood for my daughter! So for now Gulzar Saab's 'Lakde ki kaathi' shall suffice, there is violence that exists via the hitting a hammer on the horse's behind, but atleast we know that the horse is a wooden one!