Whats this racket...

Imagine you are sitting in a room with a tin roof, and its raining incessantly. Sometimes it is soft and soothing even, but sometimes its loud and scary. Every now and then, add a couple of thunders too. And this room is in the middle of an African rain forest, where people around do not even speak your language. And they humor you, and try to cuddle you, and essentially treat you like a toy capable of laughable antics.

No. You are not a prisoner of war. Neither are you an African science project (if there exists such a thing)... nor are you about to be offered to God as a human sacrifice. You are, in fact, just a baby.

I read this in an article in Reader's Digest several years back, and somehow since I was writing about babies in my last post, I felt like including this small factoid here too. Ofcourse, for new parents, much of this may be old news. But my role here is that of awakening consciousness... and so this is mostly for people who are uninitiated about such facts.



In my earlier scenario, just replace the tin roof with the baby's eardrums, and the rain with all the noise around (note that it includes our voices too, as words without meaning are nothing but noise). I read that when you speak to a baby, your voice corresponds to a different sounding rain drop falling on that tin roof. Now if its nice and soft, like a plitter platter, the baby smiles. Not because the baby thinks you are the next brad pitt/princess diane, but just because the baby likes the sound of your voice! Alarmingly simple, isnt it? And since the baby hears his/her mother's soft voice the most, it will always find that voice the most soothing (ofcourse, once baby grows up to a kid and mom has to shout all the time its a whole new story meritting I guess a whole new blog post :) ).

So next time you go see a baby and you are all "goo-goo, ga-ga" with it, remember that you will need many years of unlearning to speak that language again, but at least if you can be soft and tender, there are more chances of that priceless giggle over that blasting baby siren!

And even if that siren does sound, dont take it personally. Blame it all on that African rainforest thingy ;)