This is a very philosophical discussion. Some say that sound is defined as the vibration of air as picked up by a human ear. Since there is no one to receive the vibrations there is no noise. Some say that there is a noise irrespective of a person being present or not.

My take on this is, is this even a discussion? Of course there is a noise. In tamil there is an adage, ‘Poonai kannai moodinal ulagam irundu poidadthu’. (Word for word translation: If a cat closes it eyes, the world does not go dark. What it means: Just because you block yourself out of something, it doesn’t mean that it does not exist).

In case you are all wondering why all this sudden spark on philosophy, it was something Mieja did. She is totally in to playing peek-a-boo. I kind of started the peek-a-boo thing for her. She was about 6 or so months, was able to sit in her high chair. But she used to hate it if I left her in her high chair by herself. Even if I had to grab a paper towel from the kitchen, she used to scream her head off. So I would walk to the kitchen door and say peek-a-boo, then would hide behind the kitchen wall, do peek-a-boo a few times, then quickly grab my paper towel or whatever that I was looking for and come back to her. According to her I was just playing with her, I was never gone. It is now a favorite game of hers. She would look at me, give me her most enticing smile, walk to the nearest corner, every now and then checking if I am still looking at her, disappear around the corner, then pop her head out and say ‘Ummm’. Some times she would pitter patter to the kitchen, stand clutching the doorframe and would sway her whole body from one feet to another simultaneously nodding her head from side to side. It is her version of peek-a-boo.

Three weeks back, I was washing my hands on the bathroom sink, she came running in to the bathroom, ran past me in to the standing shower stall, climbed in to it, clutched the corner and was playing peek-a-boo with me. Well the funny part was that, the shower stall was completely glass! So I laughed and said, “Mieja, I can still see you even if you think you are hiding.” She was just having a ball, she didn’t care.

But I started thinking about what was going on in her mind, does she even realize that if she can see me through the glass, I can see her too. The thought process then leaped on to ‘how much children learn and how fast they learn’, then to ‘how exactly that connection takes place in their brain’, then to the trees falling in Godforsaken places and finally ended up constructing a post around the bits and pieces that sparked in my mind. Okay it was not exactly a spark, more like dim sputtering light bulb.