I just love Two-Face, the schizophrenic villain in Batman – he actually has the ability to dispassionately analyze each issue to death before coming to a course of action; how I wish, I would have been able to do this on several occasions before jumping to conclusions and forming opinions. I was recently reminded of Two Face as I listened to a few fairy tales and nursery rhymes – now why on earth would I do that? Since my wife is expecting our first kid, I was catching up on a few rhymes to be able to recite them ‘when the time comes and I have to live up the duty of being a father’ (as usual, I believe in preparing well ahead of time – which is why I am also weighing the pros and cons of different schools and colleges aka Two Face). Moreover the pre-pregnancy counselor told us that we, as would-be parents, should listen to a ‘few good songs, stories and inspirational tales’ on a daily basis since these would have a profound impact on the neurological and spiritual development of the baby! (On a separate note, listening to all the 1740 things that ‘good, responsible parents’ have to do, from the pre-pregnancy counselor, made me wonder how mankind ever brought up babies for the last 1500 years without such angel-like advice – but this is a topic for a separate discussion and lets not mix it here).
As I heard the different rhymes and tales, I started reflecting on their meanings and found myself becoming more cynical than I normally am (and this is a big deal since I can spot calories and cholesterol when my friends and relatives are going ga-ga over home-made, pure-ghee sweets). For instance, the story of the hare and tortoise is an immortal classic for all kids and toddlers – the story is meant to tell you that ‘Slow and Steady wins the race’. As I heard a song-version of this story, my hyper-active, cynical self started speaking, “Which race can a slow and steady person ever win in life? You have to be fast – Fast is Best – fast food, fast cars, fast s**. Anything that is fast is better, say for example, a super-fast train is better than a slow train and you only have to look at the jam-packed fast local trains in Mumbai to certify the illogical meaning of the saying. Moreover, one has to be fast to be ahead in queues, fast to book tickets for super-hit movies, fast to rise up the corporate ladder blah blah blah.” As one mind started giving rise to these thoughts, another mind started saying, “Lets see what the hare did – yes, he lost the race but in the process enjoyed the beauties of Mother Nature, ate fruits and berries and had a great nap in the shade whereas all the tortoise did was slog, slog and slog to win the ‘race’ – so who was able to enjoy the race fully? Who was able to have a great ‘work-life’ balance? Who was able to (in the words of W.H.Davies) go against the grain of ‘What is this life, if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare’ and take in the full breeze, smell the scent of the roses and lilies and then go on to complete the race”. Why would the fairy tale ever declare the hare the loser? The answer is obvious – it was written by somebody who wanted to encourage kids to gear up for the rat race! Victory, in this context, has been defined in a narrow sense – that of crossing the line drawn by somebody else and you are supposed to feel elated only after crossing the line. So long as you have not crossed the line, you are supposed to feel incomplete and continue slogging. And yes, kids carry on this subliminal tendency throughout – not just in school but also through college and at work and in life, at large. Having heard this fairy tale several times over in the formative years of childhood, I now wonder whether I would have lived differently had I known that the “winner” is not one who crosses the line first but one who has enjoyed the race the most? One last thought crossed my mind as I moved to the next story – the tortoise had an unwavering focus to win the race and it won, whereas for the hare , could the purpose have been to maximize the experience of life itself? Alas, all of us have ingrained this story to such an extent that during weekdays we are intent on crossing the line first without caring for several other things – and then, on weekends (like today, when I am writing this article), we try to be like the hare. To me, this tale is the reason for my own ‘life happens on weekends’ syndrome.
Another type of fairy tale is that of the beautiful princess and the handsome prince, who has to do several courageous feats to win her hand. As I became the Two-Face for this archetype, I realized that there is no fairy tale in which the princess has to do any ‘acts of bravery’ to win the prince’s hand in marriage. All she has to do is wear pretty dresses , cry a bit (probably due to the misery she is under since she is locked away under some spell or kept in a dungeon by the big bad demon) and then smile a bit and live happily every after. The questions going through my mind are, “Is this what we are subconsciously imbibing in the minds of baby girls, who after several years, realize that the world is very different, realize that even they have ambitions beyond the home and the hearth, realize that they can be the prince after all or even worse, realize that the prince is no-good?” There are several sub-versions of this tale but what is quite interesting to note is the kinds of actions that the prince and princess have to do to redeem themselves – the princess has only to kiss the frog to turn him into a prince whereas the prince has to battle a hundred demons to win the princess. All the princess’ actions are gentle and ‘ladylike’ whereas the prince has to ‘win the trial by fire’. This, in my view, sows the initial seeds of gender discrimination, which the girl-child has to face throughout her life, whether as a daughter, a wife, a mother and across various walks of life.
There is a third type of nursery rhymes which advocate or perpetrate certain traits, albeit inadvertently. In Marathi, the most famous nursery rhyme is ‘Ye re ye re pawasa’, in which the small child requests the rain to come – in the very next line, the child offers one paisa to the rain for coming. Isnt this an outright form of bribery? There is another poem titled ‘Sang sang Bholanath’ (in which the child asks Lord Shankar if there will be rain the next day so that his school will be closed) – I often wonder if the ‘great Indian tendency to shirk work’, whether due to public holidays, bandhs or the slightest disruption of normal life, stems from poems like this?
Lastly, there are fairy tales which I think have lost their relevance in today’s world. An illustration that fit this category is ‘Ba ba black sheep, have you any wool?’ Have urban kinds seen sheeps that give wool – my most common early interactions have been with goats (and that too dead ones, at the mutton shop, which I used to frequent with my father on Sundays). The first time I saw a ‘wool-giving sheep’ was in Scotland several years after my childhood had long ceded. Another example is ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water’ – in today’s times, why would anybody go up the hill to fetch water (and that too, only a pail)? Yes, maybe if it was from the water tanker parked up the hill, then it would have reflected some semblance of truth. Similarly, there is a popular Marathi poem ‘Lal tanga gheoni ala Lala Tangewala’ (meaning that the red tonga came, driven by the driver whose name was Lala) – tongas are becoming extinct in towns and cities and wherever they are still running, one just has to look at the plight of the horses!
Does this mean that we have to review every poem and fairy tale from a psychological standpoint and correct it? Should we eradicate those that either don’t reflect reality or are likely to ‘sow the seeds of some deep-rooted emotion that could prove extremely dangerous to humanity’ (wow, I just love the serious language used – reflects my sessions with the pre-pregnancy counselor!). Now, don’t get me wrong – I am just demonstrating the Two-Facian approach. I, myself, can easily argue that nursery rhymes and poems should be left untouched for they are nothing but ways to incite the child’s imagination and enable some form of communication with the child. Hence one need not impute too much meaning and question every line (this is what I call the Da Vinci syndrome after Dan Brown’s book - when I visited Paris just some months after the release of the best-seller, I found tourists trying to find meaning in almost everything in the Louvre. Hence, simple sentences became cryptic clues to the Holy Grail, number of steps up and down became codes and the shadow of the sun falling on the Eiffel tower became the ‘directions to some lost secret of humanity that must not be revealed till ‘the time comes’). There maybe nothing and no more meaning to fairy tales and nursery rhymes beyond being just another way of connecting with infants. I also don’t want to be accused of spoiling the fun of nursery rhymes and fairy tales (and be a critic of the multi-million dollar kids entertainment industry which thrives on fairy tales) but then, Two Face, will always have his doubts…
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