A little bit of negative emotions

I would say I am a kind gentle parent. I am calm and composed as much as possible and try not to hold her back from experiencing the world unless it is severely dangerous. And when it is time I need to say 'no' I explain it to her. Even though she might resist a little eventually she gets it. I can proudly say that after minutes of debate, we come to terms, and there is mutual understanding between us. And I am still talking about me and my toddler here. 

You might wonder what I'm talking about. It's nothing complicated. All I do is show her the respect she deserves and ensure she is given an equal opportunity to make her points. Mind you, she is 3&1/2.

This story is about her ignorance and how she learned her lessons. It had nothing to do with me intentionally teaching her a lesson. 

She loves school

We were going through numbers from 1 to 20. She always skipped 15, and 17, in the sequence. I simply would make her repeat it after me. It never bothered her to correct herself because I did not force it on her. Today one of her friends who is a little older came over and they were playing. Randomly they were shouting numbers and out of habit, Nabha missed 15 and 17. Her friend who is equally innocent, started laughing at her mistake. And she corrected My baby then and there. For the older kid, it was silly. But it touched my baby where it was supposed to. She felt a little embarrassed, she felt a little angry, she was a little jealous all because her friend knew it and she didn't. That made my baby learn the correct sequence of numbers. I am sure she will not forget it now. 

I am so proud of my baby at this point. I could see all the negative emotions in her eyes and in her body language and raised voice. But even with all that, she was composed and never told her friend off. She accepted what she didn't know and most importantly she learned. She learned not just the sequence of numbers but how to deal with her emotions. She might still be ignorant which will take a lot of experience in life to get over, but at this point, she knows some people know more than you and you need to learn from them if you need to be better. 

So bottom line is, life is not a piece of cake. A little bit of negative emotions, healthy competition, and a learning mindset will push you forward to make you a better version of yourself. 

Databases and cupboards

It was a quite calm evening while my baby was asking Alexa to play her favorite songs. Poor fed-up Alexa was figuring out the songs instructed by this little girl and playing them without questions.

Off the topic, sometimes I feel bad for Alexa. After me, it's she who gets harassed the most. But she manages to pay attention to my kiddo when she requests songs and attempts her best to get them right. Kudos to her.

So going back to the story, my kiddo just turned around and asked me how Alexa played the music that she asked for? Her question might be basically about databases. I asked her a series of questions to confirm if that was what she wanted to understand. And here is my explanation:

Cupboard v/s Database

She has a cupboard with organized space for all kinds of clothes she has. A rack with t-shirts and matching bottoms, a whole compartment for her lovely dresses, some space for her school clothes, etc. It is so organized that she can pick up what she wants by herself.

"You see how you have a cupboard, Alexa also has one where she has all the songs kept. Whenever you ask for a song, she goes to her cupboard, finds it, and gets back to you." 

It was a little hard for her to picture songs as her clothes. Obviously, it is stupid of me. Clothes can be touched and seen but music is just for the ears. So I thought for a while. Then I said, 

"Your cupboard has clothes that can be touched and Alexa has music in her cupboard which can be heard. She has it well organized and that is why she can play it so quickly." 

At this point, I also understood that I should not stop and simplify the answer to her but leave a bit of technical details so that she can associate things with a very basic understanding. So I continued, we call Alexa's cupboard a database. 

I think it made sense to her and she was happy she learned something new. 

Hierarchy everywhere

Hierarchy is everywhere. If you have a wonderful boss it feels like a boon to be in a hierarchical system. The one on top is competent enough to lead their team of managers who get work done on the ground level. An efficient system doesn't mean they don't have room for errors but most importantly they are capable of working efficiently while handling the mistakes and looking out for each other. 

So the first figure is DNA which is the boss,
the middle one is the RNA or the manager and
the tiny spiky circles are the molecules or as
we call them here, workers.

Wouldn't it be surprising to see such a system even in a living body? Well, it does happen in each living cell. Hierarchically there are 3 levels of communication inside any living being. Let's call them the boss, the manager, and the actual worker similar to our social life. Whatever the boss says, the manager communicates with the worker, and in turn, the worker gets the work done. Also, whatever information the worker carries is told to the boss for further discussion. 

In the case of living beings, DNA is the boss, RNA is the Manager, and the chemicals and other molecules are the workers. So when I say microbes produce chemicals for others to sniff, it just means that the boss has ordered the same to happen. Let's upgrade ourselves at this point and start calling these chemicals as proteins and enzymes. It makes more sense in terms of Biology.   

If you can follow the images, which I am proud to say, I attempted to do it by myself, that is basically every small thing works in a living system. every cell is individually capable of functioning independently. That's how microbes which are single-cell beings live independently in a community. 

Is it really dumbing down the answers?

When we were younger, we all wondered how stuff happens and why it happens a certain way. This story is one such incident between my baby and I. 

A few days ago my daughter wondered: Why does rain stop pouring? Not why does it rain but why does it stop. To explain it better she said, it doesn't stop being sunny till night but it surely stops raining after a while. 

What an amazing question. But how do I explain the water cycle to a 3.5-year-old? 

So I simply said, it's because the water in the rain gets emptied and so the rain stops. She understood that, but my answer did not convince her. In fact, she had more questions that were inexpressible to her anymore. One thing that I have learned with her is, that if I tell her things and relate to stuff that she is already familiar with, it becomes easy for her to understand it. 

Just her exploring the camera

Isn't that true for every one of us? Anything we don't understand is rocket science until we relate it to something we already know. I think that's what is called dumbing it down. But it is actually understanding a complex matter so much that you can easily relate it to your life. 

So coming back to our little conversation, How do I relate the water cycle to her world? After thinking for a while [disclaimer: it's a little gross] rain was pretty close to pee. Hear me out here! This is what I explained to her:

You feel like peeing when your bladder is full (she knows the feeling of a full bladder now), and then when you finish peeing, you know your bladder is empty. When the rain stops, it just means that the clouds are empty, just like your bladder. I could see her face of contentment. I had answered her question and she had understood it. Though my husband had grossed out by now, I was happy that I didn't leave another unanswered question for my daughter. And as for my baby, she doesn't discriminate between being clean and dirty and good and bad, as long as she understands the answer. She is not biased yet. So I took my chances to keep her that way. 

What would your response be?    

Personalities in Bacteria

Please read my Previous friendly blog to keep following what I am trying to tell here.

We learned that bacteria are social species and interact with each other using chemicals. The specific term for that is 'autoinducers'. Moving ahead, these autoinducers' job is not just confined to the microbial community but also the environment around them. For example, the autoinducers in the gut are responsible for particular functions of the digestive system itself. So basically what I am trying to say is socially active microbes do not just influence their growth but the environment they are living in as well. 

Like people, these microbes can also be called extroverts, or introverts, spreading positive or negative vibes, etc. Some microbes talk only amongst themselves (species-specific autoinducer) while others go beyond their circle and talk to all the different species (crosstalk between species). Those who are extremely extroverts can communicate so well that they can influence other species either negatively or positively. 

For example, you would have heard of Staphylococcus (commonly known as Staph) infection which is quite common in food poisoning. Certain Bacillus species that produce spores (a kind of autoinducer), negatively impact the Staph bodies and infection can be under control.   

You might be wondering how introverts influence each other as a community. Let's take an example of Cholera. The microbe responsible for Cholera is called Vibrio cholerae (VC). Each VC cell contributes to the formation of biofilm. And what in God's name are Biofilms? 

Imagine a person building a home with bricks. He would be taking a long time to construct the home alone along with battling the objections from his environment, say rainy or windy days. What if more people joined him? They would build the home faster and protect themselves sooner from environmental damage. Imagine the same for microbial communities. They need to protect themselves to survive and thrive. So a roof over such a community is nothing but the Biofilm. Each cell produces the brick that eventually forms the Biofilm. The larger the community thicker the Biofilm which in turn is harmful for humans as Biofilm protects the VC from the human environment.   

How about that! Isn't it interesting to know microbes and humans are so similar yet unique?

Swara Jnana

 I do have a little bit of background in classical music. I learned Carnatic music in bits and pieces over the years, but as life got serious, I left music altogether.

Now, I see a growing interest in music in my little baby. She is so curious about songs and picks up the tone and lyrics incredibly quickly. It’s just bliss to hear her sing with the most joyous voice. That’s when I thought—why not go for formal training? I debated with myself whether it was too early or not. "It’s not too early" won the argument, and as a reward, both of us joined a Hindustani classical music class. And believe me, I can see her enjoying every minute of it.

Talking about Swara Jnana

All these years of training, I always thought I had a good sense of notes—I could place them correctly, sing in the proper rhythm, and follow all the technicalities. But today, during our class, I learned something so fascinating that it actually blew my mind. I realized I had been wrong this whole time.

Until now, I believed that Swara Jnana meant singing in the proper raga and at the correct shruti. But in reality, it is this:

If a random song is played, and you are capable of identifying the raga and figuring out the sargam, that is when you have truly acquired Swara Jnana. Otherwise, if you only sing the songs taught to you—whether classical or any other genre—you haven't mastered classical music. You’ve just learned to sing well, like in light music.

Image from google

How to Acquire Swara Jnana?

Practice! Practice hard until you know a raga so well that, if any song in that raga is played, you can immediately connect it to the raga. Through relentless practice, you will deeply internalize the notes and easily identify the sargam of any song.