Kid stuff?

I was probably in college when I first became aware that the usually whimsical, often hilarious and apparently innocuous nursery rhymes that all children (at least in educated families) are fed with actually have convoluted, unexpected and frequently very dark histories – certainly not what in this hyper-sensitive, politically correct age we would regard as appropriate stuff for children. What surprises await the person who first explores the stories behind Jack and Jill, Humpty Dumpty, Mary Mary, quite contrary and Ring a ring o’ roses! For starters, the curious might look up this website.

Strange, indeed, that children absorb the fun without having their psyches permanently warped by such red-hot material (and lucky for literature that most mothers never find out!). Obviously kids are made of much sterner stuff than we normally credit them with…

Hello, Sir?

It happens time and time again that old boys (or girls) ring up, hear my daughter's (or wife's) voice, and say 'Hello Sir, this is X here...'.

And many of these people are sharp and bright young folk, going by their school reports. It makes me wonder about what the IQ levels and reflex speeds of their progeny are likely to be...

Overheard

...now that the dadus have retired, and we have a dada as well as a didi to look up to, no one can stop Bengal from forging full-steam ahead!

Geronimo!

The more alert and aware people of diverse social groups become of their rights, privileges and dignity, the more difficult it becomes to stay politically correct all the time. It has become well-nigh impossible to make public jokes about racial and gender stereotypes. You have to call the head of a university department a ‘chair’ these days, because both chairman and chairwoman are insulting to one or other group of sensitive people, and chairperson never really caught on. Now I hear that some native American Indians are up in arms demanding an apology from US government authorities for using ‘Geronimo’ as a codename for Osama bin Laden during the military operation that killed the latter recently (see, for instance, this link). The way things are going, commanders planning super-secret military operations are going to spend more time worrying about appropriate codenames than about the details of the operations!