One of the great pleasures of parenthood, Sravani and I both concur, is seeing Dharani engrossed in something- a few strands of grass she's just plucked, the way a shadow is moving on the wall, a bird that's landed infront of her, the laces of her trousers. It is pure, unadulterated attention. To be clear, what I'm referring to is different from her reaching out to grab something colourful, soundful(?) that's in one of our hands to, usually, put in her mouth. This is her transfixed, furiously processing, trying to comprehend the pattern. Or it feels that way. As if she is trying to glean something more abstract, mathematical, a deeper truth, as it were, from the light and sound show. If I were to inclined, I'd probably have said that this is her trying to retrieve an ancient, primal memory from one of her many previous births; Or, perhaps, some kind of civilisational memory1. Sort of a 'Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny' of consciousness.
There is a beautiful, unexpectedly moving, scene in Sasquatch Sunset where the adoloscent character is lying down under a clear night sky and trying to count stars. It grunts a one, grunts, in a slightly different tone, a two, and then tries to get to three but is unable to. Frustrated it goes back to one, then two, and then again.. no luck. One more go. Its as if its willing one part of its brain to comprehend and communicate what another part faintly deciphers. Almost as if seeing a faint light around a dark corner and willing your legs to take you there to get a better view. In his essay I read in Prof. Dawkins' The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing, Prof. Nicholas Humphrey writes of observing his infant son's actions, enraptured by his moving hands among others, and compares the boy's evolving self to a conductor directing musicians who, in this case, are his body parts. What's shocking to the baby here is the fact that his directions seem to have a real-world effect. It is a conductor realising, first slowly then rapidly, the extent of their powers; Eventually also their limitations.
I see manifestations of this notion when Dharani repeats syllables after us, the day when she first grokked that my outstretched hands were an invitation for her to climb aboard nanna, the difference between bobba and mammu spoons that amma is trying to teach her, the realisation that when people go out of sight, they usually reappear in a little bit. It is a magnificent sight made all the more remarkable by how unremarkable it is- how millions of babies, both human and others, do it every single day2. I keep telling people I wait for the day when she'll tell her first lie because I believe that'll mean she's now able to imagine counterfactuals/ narrative branches; And not just that present, external reality is one among many possibilties but also that our words are performative utterances- the saying makes it real (atleast, for the most part, in social reality)3. Its probably a reflection of my changing attitude to words4, from enchantment to bessottedness to, now, a more prosaic view of its myriad uses but also limitations, that I'm now more excited with at this pre/para-linguistic learning.
I can see her sense of self being created in real-time. She has desires, yes. She has emotions, yes. Proclivities/ Vasanas too. She has a budding intellect that includes a communication system and an action-response learning apparatus5. What I don't see completely formed, if it ever is completely formed, is the notion of self. The memories and abilities (is there anything else?6) that come together and around which we create a fairly strong boundary (API-like) to refer to ourselves for our own thinking, planning, referring, understanding, rationalising. What's required for that is obviously enough data (interactions, learnings, memories etc.) but also the realisation that one needs something resembling a personality to live with other social beings. Like a sophisticated version of the What-is-the-other-person-feeling mechanism broached in Prof. Humphrey's The Inner Eye since we live in a much more advanced protocol-landscape. Like we can literally see her regulate her wailing and calibrate her internal model (perhaps even un/sub-consciously) based on our response to whatever she's wailing about unless the emotion is almost entirely stimulus-driven. It almost feels like her eyes turn into the processing icon while her brain is computing in the background.
Often, at this stage of her evolution, it feels like interacting with an alien intelligence. Sometimes with a less, if that's the word, mature one. In a sense its both. I kept thinking of my interactions with Noori while I read Verlyn Klinkenborg's 'Such flexible intensity of life' and the first few pages of Ed Yong's An Immense World. Part of raising a kid is to introduce her to the ways of interacting with the outside, other-peopled world. About helping her develop an imaginative empathy (or is it an empathetic imagination?) and a manipulatable intellect (manipulating both her intellect as well as using the intellect to manipulate the outside) for her well-being and thriving. On the other hand, it is also an opportunity for me to peek beyond the barriers I've created over the years and see the world, and my own self, with a new set of untrained/ uncorrupt eyes.
And that's what's so frustrating/ rewarding about being a father. My child, currently, is a being that's so self-centred that there's no proper self to speak of- only desire and action. So there's no way to argue, request, berate, properly communicate about my priorities, wishes, plans etc. 'Can you please sleep now because I've lined up the rest of the evening with this nap in mind and if you don't you'll be too tired later meaning we can't go out meaning damn I'm going to miss having a good time meaning I'm going to be pissed off meaning I'm preemptively going to be pissed off now' is met with complete disregard which is infuriating but also, after it passes, refreshing7. What I thought was so critical isn't so and its fine so why was I getting so worked up? is the question that arises ofcourse after the irritation and anger passes. Its not too far from the truth to say kids rebuild you. In our obsessively-consumerist, highly-individualistic world, they may be the last force powerful enough to topple you off the small hill of self-importance and personal comforts. Its a quasi-religious experience, raising a child, almost medieval in its masochistic and miraculous tendencies.
What I'm telling myself is this: it won't get easy, maybe it'll get a little more predictable but if you really meant it when you said you were Searching for the Sacred in your mid-20s, congratulations, here's a chance.
1 और इस जहां के जो हैं कुछ फ़साने बने जिससे मैं और तुम
2 There's an old Prof. Elizabeth Spelke talk in which she says, iirc,
babies are born with four abilities: spatial awareness, some sense of cause-effect, setup for basic numeracy, and a form of universal grammar-like ability
3 Oh, I can't wait to read Prof. Lee Cronin's Assembly Theory paper with her
4 I've been reading a bit around LLMs and the question of if we're just stochastic parrots has been humming in the background. I reached a fairly stable ground while listening to Prof. Elan Barenholtz's SLP Podcast the other day. TL;DR: Most of our speech trajectories usually follow an LLM template in the sense that we speak, without realising, in previously spoken-on patterns, loading responses from memory ('To know is to stage' Ha!) instead of rebuilding from/ corroborating with a larger reality, and that means unless you're careful, you can end up becoming a stochastic 'useful idiot'. Also memory isn't some SQL-esque data retrieval. It closely resembles LLMs/other neural network trained systems (apparently) in that it creates answers on the fly
5 Was it on Substack or on a podcast where I learnt about the 'Secret of Learning' which was essentially a Curiosity-Gene: the inherent desire to know builds the requisite infrastructure and capabilities i.e., learning to learn
6 Strongly argued, ability too is just memory. Here I'm thinking of Neo from The Matrix's surprise at learning he can fight after being loaded the appropriate software
7 Also, I think its really old evolutionary wiring to be completely disarmed by a baby's smile