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From Poshampa to Uma Joshi

The Lore of Anglophone Children in India

Deepa Agarwal

Oranges and lemons,

sold for a penny, all the schoolgirls are so many,

the grass and the rose is red, remember me till I am dead, dead, dead

Who doesn’t recall the spontaneous joy of childhood play? A rhythmic chant to
accompany a clapping game, a song sung linking hands in a circle, nonsense
rhymes to skip by. But where do these songs originate from? Many in the Indian
languages have been passed down over generations, but as we well know, the
English ones prevalent among urban children are a legacy of colonial rule.
There is also a third and very interesting category—the self-created lore of
contemporary youngsters which combines local languages with English.

Most playsongs seem to have no meaning. Children throw a bunch of rhyming

words together to provide a beat for the movements of a clapping game or other
forms of group play. It is almost as if the more bizarre the potpourri of
disconnected words, the greater pleasure kids derive in repeating them. All they
need is an excuse for some horseplay, banter and mayhem. But if you pay
careful attention to what they are singing, you might get a shock. You could
discover parodies that mock authority figures, or even sexual references.

Consider this saucy chant:

Baj gaye 12 baj gaye

Upar baj gaye ek,

Masterji ne chhutti na di

Bhookha reh gaya pet

Pet se nikla phoda

Phode se nikla khoon

Jaldi kar do telephone

Telephone me taar nahi

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Main tumhara yaar nahin

Yaar gaye Dilli

Wahan se laye do billi

Ek billi kaani

Voh masterji ki nani!

Childlore has been described as inhabiting a peer-to-peer space. Children often

use it as an outlet to vent emotions they prefer to conceal from adults. Thus a
subversive rhyme provides the perfect vehicle of their frustration with an
authoritarian teacher.

The academic study of childlore, the exclusive culture of childhood as separate

from the rhymes adults teach to children, began in the late nineteenth century
but it was Iona and Peter Opie who conducted the most extensive research into
it. When the Opies set out to examine the “unselfconscious culture” of those
they described as “the greatest of savage tribes, and the only one that shows no
sign of dying out” they discovered that this culture is shared only between
children of a particular age group who have been its custodians for centuries.
Apart from playground songs, children’s riddles, jokes, superstitions, even their
bogies belong to a world special to them. Adults tend to dominate children by
dictating their routine and controlling their activities. Consequently the loosely
supervised time in the playground becomes an escape and the games and songs
children invent and share a vehicle for free expression.

In the multi-layered world of Anglophone children in India versions of games

and songs introduced during colonial times keep step with local chants inherited
from their elders and children’s own fabrications that circulate through
anonymous oral routes. Playsongs are volatile shape shifters like the characters
of children’s fantasy novels. Some of the English songs have even crept into our
regional languages in new avatars.

When I joined boarding school as a seven-year-old, I could read and write

competently in English but could converse only in Hindi. On my first day, as I
stood in the playground, daunted and confused, a girl pulled me into a game. A
group of kids had formed a circle linking hands. One child was placed inside as
the lamb while another prowled outside playing the wolf, “Here I cut, here I
break, and here I eat my wedding cake!” snarled the wolf, chopping at the
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linked hands. When she managed to break through a weak link, the safe circle
came apart. Everyone screamed and ran while the wolf pounced on the lamb.

Now part of a boisterous group, I found my homesickness had vanished. Such is

the magic of childhood play, where a friendly impulse can provide space for an
outsider so easily.

Soon I was participating in other playground games and had mastered the
accompanying songs and rhymes. There was “Oranges and Lemons”, “I Sent a
Letter to my Love”, “Little Mary is a-weeping” “Farmer’s in the Den” and the
clapping game “Hot Cross Buns” among several others, including skipping rope
chants.

The words and the tune of “Oranges and Lemons” were new to me. But the
game was not totally unfamiliar. It was quite similar to Poshampa, a game
which is still popular but more so in rural areas now.

In both games two players would join hands to form an arch. The others passed
through in single file while the gatekeepers sang:

Poshampa bhai poshampa

Lal quiley me kya hua
Sau rupaye ki ghadi churai
Ab toh jail mein aana padega
Jail ki roti khani padegi
Jail ka paani peena padega
Ab toh jail me aana padega!

As the verse drew to its end, the tempo became faster and more menacing and
we tried to race through the arch. Because we knew when the last line came, the
trap would be sprung. Whoever got caught within the arch was “put in jail”.
This went on till everyone had been captured. The difference was that in
“Oranges and Lemons” the two main players decided in the beginning who was
the orange and who the lemon. The captured player had to choose a side in a
whispered exchange and would line up behind the person she had selected. In
the end there would be a tug of war to decide who was stronger—the oranges or
the lemons.

When we played “I sent a letter to my love” singing:

“I sent a letter to my love and on the way I dropped it,

Somebody came and picked it up and put it in his pocket.”

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I was reminded of “Koda Jamaal khai”. In that game too, we sat in a circle
while one child ran around it with a handkerchief. The trick was to slyly drop
the hanky behind someone. If they noticed, they would pick it up and run to
drop it elsewhere while the first child would grab their seat. If the hanky went
unnoticed for one round, the person who was ‘It’ would pick it up and hit the
careless child with it while everyone screamed and clapped. The words went:

Koda jamal khayi,

picche dekha maar khayi
raste mein chalta tha
uski chiththi gir gayi
kisi ne utha lee
laad saab ko de di
laad saab ne phaad phood ke phenk di!

As you can observe, the Hindi version is fairly similar. However, in crossing the
language barrier the rhyme has lost its innocence and become somewhat grim.
Jamaal’s whipping brings in the sour note of colonial oppression which finds its
culmination in the “Laad sahib” tearing up the letter and throwing it away.

In “Little Mary is a-weeping” we would form a circle and the girl chosen to be
Mary knelt inside, covering her face with her hands. The rest linked hands and
walked around her singing:

“Little Mary is a-weeping, a-weeping, a-weeping

On a bright summer’s day,

Pray tell us what you’re weeping for,

‘Mary’ would reply:

“I’m weeping for a playmate,

On this bright summer’s day,

The others would respond:

“Stand up and choose your playmate,

The girl would choose a playmate who would take her place and thus the game
went on.
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According to Wikipedia, this is a very old English song and over a hundred
versions have been collected in Britain since the 1880s, with names varying
from Jenny, Mary and Sally.

Curiously, however, this song has also passed into our regional childlore. A
similar Hindi song is recorded in (The Oxford Handbook of Children's Musical
Cultures, Volume 2, Patricia Shehan Campbell, Trevor Wiggins) which
researchers encountered in a rural area of Bihar:

“Nadi kinare ek ladki thi

Baithi, baithi roti thi

Utho saheli, utho, muh haath dho lo

Khana pina kha lo, apni saheli dundh lo!”

One cannot help but wonder how this song travelled all that way. But this is
how childlore reinvents itself by traversing the bounds of language.

During my school days in the 1950s the colonial influence was still very strong.
When my children joined school in the 1980s, some of the old English songs
were still popular. But childlore is far from static and a fascinating new range
had sprung up which reflected the actual language children used.

Here is one such chant. It accompanies a clapping game with two players much
like the old English “Hot cross buns”.

“Uma Joshi, yay, yay, yay!

My mother she told me, 60 years ago,

there was a lady knocking at the door,

with a oooh aaah, I want some pie,

if the pie is sweet then I want some meat, if the meat is tough,

I want to go by bus, if the bus is full, I want to ride a bull,

if the bull is fat, I want my money back,

if the money is green, I want some jelly beans,

if the jelly beans are red I want to go to bed,

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if the bed is blue I want to go to the loo,

if the loo is black I want to give you a tight slap!”

I want some cherry beans

The cherry beans are red, I want to go to bed
The bed is yellow, goodbye dirty fellow!!!"

The slap is actually exchanged in the end.

This song still holds sway in playgrounds. An internet search revealed its
immense popularity and flung up different versions in numerous nostalgic
blogs. It’s quite obvious that this verse is a completely desi product. The words
are pure nonsense and the rhymes composed to maintain the beat for brisk
clapping. But as happens with playsongs, often words that do not register
properly lose their meaning and are transformed into nonsense. For example
“pie” is “pa” in some versions and the “meat is rough” instead of “tough”.

Popular Bollywood songs also provide excellent material for new playsongs. I
recall my daughter singing: “Laila O Laila, give me a thaila, I’ll go to the
market and buy some karela!” You probably know where it came from—the
1980 film Qurbani.

Again, a song from the 1966 movie Suraj has been turned into a widely
circulated parody: “Titli udi, ud na saki, bus par chadhi, seat na mili, conductor
ne kaha, aaja mere paas, titli boli, chal hat badmash (main chali akash).” I must
confess I was a little disturbed when I heard my young daughter chanting this.
The reference to eve teasing displayed an adult sensibility unlike other mostly
innocent playsongs. The discovery that a matter-of-fact awareness of the nasty
side of contemporary urban life had entered childhood play was hard to digest
as a mother. Curiously, a version is included in collections of nursery rhymes.

Most rhymes are just for fun, however, like the one my daughters chanted in a
clapping game: “Miss Mart Mac Mac Mac, all dressed in black black black,
with silver buttons buttons buttons, going down her back, back, back.”

In a different vein, “Ao milo, shilo-shalo” is another clapping game quite a

craze with my granddaughter and her friends, and its popularity is obvious from
the fact that you will find it all over the internet. It has a different pattern from
Uma Joshi, and a faster rhythm.

“Ao milo, shilo-shalo, kaccha dhaga race laga lo, dus patte tode, ek patta
kaccha, hiran ka baccha, hiran gaya pani mein, pakada uski nani ne, nani gayee
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London, wahan se laayi kangan, kangan gaya toot, nani gayi rooth, nani ko
manayenge, rasmalai khilaynge, ras malai acchi, hamne khayi macchi, macchi
mein tha kaanta, tera mera chaanta, chaanta laga zor se, hamne khaye samose,
samose bade acche, nanaji Namaste.”

Here I find echoes of a song chanted by adults to infants to divert them in the
rhyme, “Chanda mama door ke, puye pakaye poor ke” which goes on “Pyali
gayee toot, Munna gaya rooth!” Thus children invent, borrow and combine old
and new.

I can list numerous other songs, rhymes and games, some handed down over
generations like the counting game Akkad Bakkad Bambe Bo. Most display no
logic, no specific theme or planned sequences like the verses written
specifically for children. It’s the word play, the occasionally irreverent humour
and the beat and rhyme that can accompany a pattern of movement that seem to
matter. Sometimes, indeed, the clapping patterns can be too complicated for an
adult to master easily.

Many of these songs demonstrate that child lore is not as cocooned from adult
concerns as we might think and keeps pace with the social and political climate
of its times. As children in a newly independent India, we chanted a rhyme that
went: ABCDEFG, usme se nikle Panditji,…and ended with Bhai Patel ne
bandhi dhoti usme se nikle Bapu Gandhi, Bapu Gandhi ne lagaya naara,
Hindustan hai sabse pyaara.” I have come across another version, probably
created decades later in which film stars like Meena Kumari and Rajesh Khanna
feature. However, it ends with the same patriotic sentiment “Raaj karega
Hindustan, jhadoo lagaye Pakistan!”

All this goes to prove that the Opies knew exactly what they were saying when
they proclaimed childlore is “the only [culture]one that shows no sign of dying
out.” Fluid, all embracing, it is a legacy of traditional knowledge, a by-product
of historical events, a subversive undermining of authority as well as a response
to social mores and political happenings. This evolving culture is always in the
process of locating novel creative sparks to formulate fresh word patterns to
accompany newly designed games. The inventiveness of urban Anglophone
children in India in creating their own lore demonstrates this very clearly. It also
belies the concern that this fascinating culture might be annihilated by the siren
song of the new media—the tablets, cellphones and other screen based
entertainment that obsess children these days. The truth is, children know better.
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