Four and twenty blackbirds..

It seemed extremely simple to me, stringing together a rhyme. Now I know how very wrong I was..

It all began when one very good school decided to organise an "Inter-school meet". Now, this meet was not just a gathering where one could generally go and speak to contemporaries and have fun as indicated by their slogan..."the meeting of young minds". It was (and I should have realised this earlier - before signing up) a series of contests to be held over three days.

The list of contests read thus:

Dance (Group and solo)
Music (Group song, Solo song, instrumental)
Theatre (Solo act, One act play)
Literary (Poetry writing/recitation, Essay writing, Short story writing.) - Hindi and English.

I weighed my options thus:

Dance - Yeah, right!
Music - Group song: No group members to sing with; Solo song: erm...nope!Instrumental: ha! ha! ha!..
Theatre - hee! hee! hee!
Literary - Only hope. :D

In school, I was quite a decent writer (or, I think I was quite a decent writer). My teachers thought so too, and that is what resulted in me signing up for the Poetry writing contest. I had always thought essay writing was the safer form of expression and wanted to sign up for the same. Unfortunately, when you have a teacher who is entirely convinced that you are the next great poetess (and you discover that both the events are to be held at the same time), signing up for the essay writing contest is not very easy. She wanted me to contribute to the recitation contest, but as described in an earlier post, I cant really face an entire crowd of people on the stage. And here I did not even know the crowd. Also, an incident in the past involving a recitation had been quite embarassing. Narrated as follows:

I have always been very fond of nursery rhymes. My favorite poem being

Sing a song of sixpence a pocketfull of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing
Oh wasn't it a dainty dish to set before a king?
The king was in his counting house, counting out his money
the queen was in the parlour, eating bread and honey
the maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes,
when a blackbird swooped down and pecked off her nose!

We were supposed to recite this rhyme to pass an examination in kindergarten. I think that was when I started to like the poem so much. I recited it day and night. The thought of the blackbird pecking off the maid's nose was extremely appealing.

When the day of the recitation arrived, I was so nervous on the stage that I mixed up the words of the last few lines. The modified lines were recited thus:

The queen was in the counting house, eating bread and honey
The maid was in the parlour, counting out the money
The king was in the garden, hanging out the clothes,
When a blackbird swooped down and pecked off her nose.

Erm... disaster.

Well, at least the queen did what she was supposed to!

And therefore, to avoid being the laughing stock of another school, I decided not to obey my teacher that one time and put my foot down rather firmly.

The topic was to be announced on the day of the contest. I had never rhymed as much as "toad" with "load" before this event. The sheer excitement of being out of school for an entire day erased from my mind the fact that I actually had some work to do there, and I spent my days in absolute harmony with all who surround me.

My mind recollected that fact at the speed of light the minute we reached the place. Amazing, how a contest can spell 'absolute agony' to some.

The topics announced, were as follows:

A day I had enjoyed
My country
Modern love

Neither of these inspired the poetic genius that I had assumed them to. The third one did not even make sense to me. For fear of offending my social studies teacher (who was already appalled at my knowledge of the subject), I decided to stay away from the second one too. The title of my poem was now evident and my abilities as a poet were attaining remarkable clarity once I wrote down the title.

At that point of time, I fully appreciated how the twenty four blackbirds must have felt being trapped inside a pie, for I felt like one myself.

I could think of around a dozen different days that would have made excellent subjects for my poem, but putting them into that form of expression was the problem. I ended up writing around eight lines of what I called my first poem. As soon as I thought that the length looked decent enough, I gave in my paper and bid farewell to all the others who were furiously scratching away, having been inspired by the likes of Wordsworth and his daffodils.

That event made me realise:

1. What extremely talented people poets are.
2. How extremely difficult it is to express things in verse for those in my league.
3. That I must think before signing up for an event!


I thought I could put them in rhyme
I was so entirely wrong,
To rhyme two words like 'sun' and 'fun'
It took me oh so long!

A song of sixpence
easier sung than written,
Will be shy the next time round,
Now that I have been bitten!


Yay!!!