The Noisy Book!

Abhay has always been sound sensitive from the beginning. Even as an infant, it was clear that he was irked by screeching sounds like that of a simple whistle or the whistle of a pressure cooker, though he made his displeasure known with a  high pitched screech himself! Soon we moved to the US and living in a quiet environment like Portland, he was insulated from all that noise typical to an Indian city. So when we moved back to Bangalore…..he had a problem with all those noises that most kids brought up in Bangalore tend to ignore or for that matter don’t seem to notice at all! For instance, it is only Abhay who notices that our neighbor has turned off her pressure cooker after four whistles, or that the next door maid is washing clothes on the wash stone or wonders why our neighbor hasn’t picked up the ringing telephone yet or covers his ears at a birthday party when the big balloon pops out glitters and candies or gets angry at vehicles with screeching horns or seems puzzled by the Namaz call at a nearby mosque or waits until the water pump has been turned off to go to bed! Well….as my husband says …. and it is only Abhay’s mom who makes a big deal out of it …by blogging about it!!!:-)

Anyway, sticking to my tradition of making each of his “issues” worthy of  a book to read aloud and write about, today I read “The Noisy Book” by Margret Wise Brown and pictures by Leonard Wiesgard. A little dog named Muffin gets a cinder in his eye and is taken to a doctor. The doctor puts a bandage over his eyes which he had to have it on the whole day. Suddenly as Muffin couldn’t see anything, he could hear everything – the tick tock sound of the clock, siss siss sound of the radiator, the snip snap sound of the scissors, ting ling sound of the telephone and not only that, he suddenly became conscious of the sound of his stomach growling, the buzz of the little fly, kerchoo of the sneeze of the doctor’s dog! As he walked back home blindfolded, he heard all the street noises – construction noises, car horns and the biggest noise of the street- the siren of the fire truck. Besides the obvious noises, Muffin managed to hear the sun rise, or the sound of snow, and other little noises one tends to ignore! Then he tried to figure out a mysterious noise that sounded like a garbage can, a big fierce lion, or the engine of a train, or a big boat or an airplane and that actually turned out to be a baby doll –a gift for Muffin from his well-wishers! Abhay quite liked the “Noisy book” and Im pretty sure that it has all to do with the way the story ends! J