Come again...NOOO!!!!

Come again...NOOO!!!!
3, 4 …5. She seems finally convinced that I have finally understood that she is finally unhappy with her maid servant. And that she has finally decided that she can manage her work herself. Finally being the operative word. Trust me it is not the height of entertainment to be the interpreter between my Northie neighbour and her Tamil speaking maid. Repetition is bad enough, angry repetition disturbs the count I keep of the number of times an idea is repeated. That is the best to do, I have discovered, when copies of the same oral output succeed each other.
Repetition, says Wikipedia, is a major rhetorical strategy for producing emphasis, clarity, amplification, or emotional effect. Emotional blackmail almost I would say, going by my neighbour’s rhetorics. Never mind that the servant is least moved and retorts in one word answers-once.
Disjunctio, epanodos, epimone, exergasia, expolitio, homiologia, hypozeuxis, palilogia, synonimia, scesis onomaton, tautologia….quite an alluring assortment of names for something as repetitive as repetition. It is interesting though that there are so many nuances to repetition-from ‘similar idea expressed with different verbs’, ‘persistent repetition of the same plea in much the same words’, ‘augmentation by repeating the same thought in many figures’ to ‘tedious and inane repetition’ ( isn’t all repetition tedious and inane?).At least the creator of these various avatars of repetitions chose intriguing names for them!
writing a sentence a hundred times to atone for one distracted mistake was my bane of school years. By the fiftieth time, the mind began to wander-by the seventieth time, the effort would shift to finding different ways to copy the words and by the hundredth the mind was firmly futuristic. A couple of these ‘impositions’ no doubt sowed the seeds of hatred for repetition in me.
And think of it yourself. Even a joke loses its sparkle when repeated. The same forwarded e-mail from different sources irks. A juicy bit of gossip loses its spiciness when circulated like conditioned air. An advice loses its solemnity when repeated by father, mother and aunt. Repeated threats lose their potential sting. ‘I love you’s’ lose their magic when repeated (to the same person that is!) Repetition is the weak weapon of the creatively challenged. Nothing new to say? Just hash the old and rehash the same content contently! Do habitual repetitors have a narcissist streak which makes them love their own voice? To them though it is newness all the time.
Wait a minute though, say the ‘repetitionists’…Repetition in a different context promotes understanding and easier acceptance of an idea. Whether addressing a wayward offspring or a crowd ready to overthrow a dictator, an idea aptly repeated amongst others puts it in relief. ‘don’t lose the gold chain I have lent you’ woven in deftly 3 times in a conversation may ensure its safety. Refrains in songs and hymns are built-in highlighters and underliners. Man’s wisdom dictates that oft-repeated prayers to the powers-that-be bear fruit. ‘Chant this line 108 times’ specifies a recipe to salvation. On 9 full-moon nights, repeat these prayers n times to achieve what you want…is the listener of the above petitions more repetition-tolerant than I am? Or do prayers and chants get more intense, like condensing milk, with each repetition? What would I do if I got boon- granting power? ‘Be precise, concise and say JUST ONCE what you want’ would say my manual.On a more terrestrial plane, repetition or refrain is seen as an effective tool. To make a public speech effective, ‘pick a powerful statement or quote and repeat it throughout your talk, inviting the audience to repeat it along with you. As they say, this gets everyone in the group singing off the same page of the hymn book. It is very powerful.’ says a treatise on repetition..er…effective talking. One of the best-known examples of repetition is Martin Luther King's inspired use of "I have a dream," in his speech at the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 Civil rights March on Washington. The speech had rising momentum, punctuated by the repeated refrains.
Hmmm…guess in today’s fast paced life, repetition is invaluable and inevitable. It may no more be about being reminded by the wife to post a letter, but repeatedly seeing ‘don’t give away your credit card number or your password’ may ring a bell of caution somewhere sometime. Repeated instructions are intrinsic to an automated world. Isn’t the feminine voice which instructs the user to close the lift door perhaps more appealing than a droopy liftman? Would alluring, repetitive voices take care of the many woes which stalk humanity today? ‘ahem! 2 teaspoons of oil will do’, ‘hiya-dump the junk-eat healthy’, ‘homework time sweetie’, ‘ U-turn here? Think it over’, ‘the queue is a queue and you too have your place in it’ or ‘eyeing what is not yours can bring you viruses’, ‘this is a wall hello!, not a public urinal’, ‘ dude-you are paying through the nose for an e-mail scam’, ‘ stealing another’s identity? Will take you only as far as the prison gates’ ‘you are about to leave carbon footprints-wipe your feet and think’ could be modern day commandments uttered sweetly again and again.‘The world evolves only through repetition’ asserts a friend. ‘You perceive it as tedium, for others it is a natural process’…

’Learning happens through repetition,’ says a special educator…thinking of it, I would add, unlearning too happens through repetition. Lost your wallet? Got stabbed behind the back? Overshopped? Fought over the same issue yet again with the spouse? Just tell yourself many times in different forms of repetition ‘my wallet is gone’ (my favorite wallet got picked, wallets are made to be stolen) or ‘I have been stabbed behind my back’ ( my back hurts, how painful a back stab is) ‘I was a shoppoholic’ ( shopping alas! Runs in my blood, shopping is a pleasurable curse I tell you), ‘one day she will see my point’ (why cant she understand me like my mother?, the next time let me make it short and sweet) and get the sting out of the wherever it hurts the most. Then there are repeaters and ‘repetees’: those who love to say the same thing three times and those who can get a hang of a simple instruction only in its third edition. The Arabian Nights narrate, with good reasons, dramatic events unfolding on the third utterance of magical words. A bit like the yahoo ‘confirm password’?
Repeated thoughts on repetition, I find, have helped me make peace with it. In fact I have found new angles and uses to it. Then, perhaps all that my neighbour must do is try an adnominatio (Repeating a word, but in a different form.) instead of an epimone (Persistent repetition of the same plea in much the same words)…