Those alluring alliterations!

English Grammar is not everyone’s cup of tea! You treated the subject with the facial expression of one administered with castor oil! While elementary Grammar centered on “nouns” and “verbs” was tolerable, anything beyond that was insipid. And when it came to topics like “Gerund”, you simply gave up! The teacher rambled away, and except for a few crows sitting on the windowsill, no one else was  interested!

The desultory proceedings in the Grammar class changed dramatically one day! The topic was “Figures of Speech” and “Alliteration” in particular. In bold letters, the teacher wrote on the blackboard- “She sells seashells on the seashore!” The entire class giggled!  And with the next example- “Round and round the rugged road, the ragged rascal ran!”, the class was in splits!

And now, alliterations rained in a torrent. The British left the shores of India decades ago, but Betty’s escapades with butter are a part of local folklore! “Betty bought a bit of butter, but the bit of butter was bitter!” And how she went and bought better butter, to make the “bitter butter better”!

The rest of the day was a fish market. Each student was in his own, repeating the sentences aloud over and over. When you enunciated alliterative sentences slowly, it was simple, like a treadmill set at a gentle pace. But once you cranked up the speed, you fumbled and spoke gibberish! It appeared only Sridhar had an anatomically different tongue.  He breezed through the alliterations effortlessly, leaving the rest of us, tongue-tied.

But the best of them, meet their match! Someone came up with an innocuous example in the vernacular called “kachcha papad pakka papad”. May be, it was the collective pressure of the rest of the class, but Sridhar floundered like the Titanic hitting the iceberg. He stumbled over the sentence, babbling like a baby! To his credit, he argued that this was not an alliteration, but a tongue-twister. Such intricacies were lost on us.

The problem with alliterations is that once they enter your head, they hold you hostage. You are forced to pamper them, and in the process, you irritate one and all. After an hour of “Betty” at home, my sister could not stand it anymore and shot back, “Can you stop this nonsense now?”

As we age, we get more uptight and rigid. Repeating alliterations aloud brings an instant smile. We have no idea how alliterations work to smoothen out the mental wrinkles. It could be the power in the wording, or perhaps the memory of childhood or the sheer absurdity of it all. We laugh with abandon, shoulders rocking, like that kid, who once sat in that English Grammar class!