Last in its lineage, the grand Mogul, the peacock

Rain-washed green has painted the countryside. Nature seems to have been besotted with only one colour on its palette, bold green. It’s very soothing to the eyes, and more so to the spirits. Trees look like they will survive mankind’s onslaught against nature. Clouds unfurl their sails across the sky and moist wind creeps into any nook corner that may still be dry. Monsoon is going well after all.

The fields around my village are splashing with as much green paddy as possible. Raise your eyes in any direction and you will see a green sea. Monsoonal sun across the corners of flying lumps of clouds gives the best glimpses of nature's bounty. But the travelling shadows also try to cover up silent, invisible man-made tragedies. Farmers have been cornered like never before. One day they are forced to dump tomatoes in roadside holes, the fruits of their labour not getting more than INR 1/Kg. The other day the price may go as high as INR 80/Kg in metros. Driven by intensive agriculture, born of costly inputs and decreasing landholdings, farmers just mindlessly dump poison in all forms of pesticides, weedicides and insecticides. So this lush green is a merciless stroke of brush on the canvas of nature, swiping away the natural world of many insects, worms, reptiles and rodents that make nature holistic and encompassing in its game of give and take across food chains. So guys, its just green paddy and poisoned soil below.

Peacocks survive on insects and reptiles in the fields. Nothing is left for them to feed upon, so food-less where would they go. A peacock's plumage swinging to gentle breeze in open surroundings of the countryside is a treat, and we were lucky to witness it countless times during our childhood. Now the last or second last generation of these destitutes, who rarely get an insect in fields, has landed with an airy resentment in the village. An irony: the poison giver is somehow better than the poison itself, at least in the short turn. In the foliage of neem and acacia trees, they just pew out their miseries. To the infants and younger lot, it gives a chance to get acquainted with the national bird's sound, and of course help them in learning the initials of human language.

My mom has an almost regular bird visitor, who perches upon the neem in our courtyard and pews out its begging song as if pleading, ‘Mai Roti do!' While she dispenses her routine chores across the yard, it continues to draw her attention. Roti delayed, it is forced to come down and enter the inner reaches of the house just to make his presence felt through his luxuriant plumage. Once roti pieces are thrown before him, it has to chuck up the offerings as fast as possible because crows line up in their accusing harsh tones, blaming him for being a transgressor who has infringed upon their rights. Crows are very clever. Some of them get behind his plumage and take a pick at his feathers to distract him. One defensive look behind and a few pieces are stolen by the other crows waiting in the wings. I call it the 'beggar peacock', my mother does not like the title though.

If that is the fate of the national bird, it’s hard to imagine the condition of others. Looking at this marvel of nature, whom mom sometimes accuses of being ungrateful -- when it comes without its plumage, all the feathers having been shed somewhere, and mom cursing it for being so mindless to waste them somewhere and not shed them in the courtyard -- I just feel sad on account of the fact that may be it is the last or at the most second last in its lineage.