Bias
A funny thing about biases is that they show up serendipitously. This means they remain invisible most of the time, and if you are alert, they show up when you are not particularly looking for them.
It’s great to be a parent of a curious kid. She asks me questions and makes me realize my limited knowledge, limitless assumptions, and funny biases.
So, as some of you might have realized, this again is about an interaction I had with my kid (now 5yo). It was a regular night, and we were struggling to get her to sleep. It was around midnight, as silent as you get in a Covid19 hit world. No honks at a distance, no vehicles passing by. No chirps from people returning home. A mild hissing of the gentle Bengaluru breeze effectively muted by toughened glass doors. The only buzz is from the ceiling fan, lulling us house-arrested souls to slumber.
And that’s exactly when the street dogs decide to party.
Suddenly, at some distance, the dogs from the street started baying and barking. These sounds definitely scare, in many cultures, they are termed ominous. I am not the superstitious kind, but, for someone who’s grown up in a culture where yowling cats is a sure sign of death in the neighborhood, such sounds can definitely trigger a chain of stupid thoughts. There was news a day back that one of the COVID-19 patients in the area had died. Half sleep is the best time for the brain to connect a whole lot of unrelated dots and create some beautiful dreams and monstrous nightmares.
While I was getting a tad irritated by the constant howling of dogs, suddenly I could hear my wife twisting and turning in the bed, mumbling her irritation out, apparently because of the same howling. Our daughter, sensing this irritation, wanted to participate as well. She is, unfortunately, the last one to sleep in the house. (And yes, she sleeps on the same bed between us)
She reached out her tiny hands to tap on my shoulder and asked in her sweet low voice, why are these dogs laughing?
I listened again, not to her question, but to the howling dogs. And tried to understand if it sounds like laughter. Apparently, one can’t say if it is crying or laughter. Some distinct sounds did resemble laughs (some humans do laugh in animal voices).
I was still engrossed in my thoughts observing my deep biases over little things like these when my little one demanded again, why are they (dogs) laughing? I smiled, almost giggled as she does, and said something around that they are friends who met after a long time, so they are having a party.
She was convinced and went back to attempting sleep. I suddenly felt I was a lot calmer, the chain of irritating thoughts is broken. And there was a mild smile the next day when I woke up. Wifey could quickly notice my smile and asked, still thinking about laughing dogs? We both burst into smiles.
Perhaps I was feeling free, there is a sense of freedom when some unknown bias is shattered.
