A honey buzzard lands softly on the giloy-canopied acacia clumps in front of our house. The creeper, whose juice became the staple drink of entire India during the pandemic waves, has covered the prickly trees so thoroughly as to make it impossible for the sun to kiss the ground below. During the rainy season, the creepy huge tent of the heart-shaped leaves becomes a nesting heaven for little birds like tailor birds and warblers. Since there is no honey around, the buzzard has to look for what it can find to survive instead of having a choice of honey.
There aren’t enough flowering and fruit trees to sustain
honeybee nestings these days. My unkempt garden has some flowers but they are
more suitable to the eyes. These can sustain a modest bee nest. However, with
the arrival of monkeys even this option is ruled out for the last couple of
seasons. They relish breaking things, so how can we expect the honeybees to get
a discount on this.
The honey buzzard without honey is just in the name of it. I
think its name will have to be changed in the absence of honey very soon.
Hungry and looking for a quick breakfast, it is perched with certain discipline
and acceptance of its honey-less fate and cranes it neck almost full circle,
its yellow-rimmed eyes scanning the surrounding leafy table for some eatable
crumbs left. It’s a majestic dark brown hawk with spotted white underside. The
crows and babblers spot it. There is a huge round of abuses hurled in
enthusiastic shrill at the transgressor. A squirrel is also employing her
vocals to provide a prickish tik-tik-tik drumbeat to the protesting chorus. The
hunter has to look somewhere else. It swoops away from the noise. I wish him a
perfect lunch of honey among the trees lining the canals around the village.
There are many trees there and maybe honeybees haven’t forsaken the land
altogether.
The other day I missed the bee eaters, the beautiful lemon
green birds who glide like tiny aircrafts. Their wings when spread out and not
flapped look like that of a fighter jet. But they don’t thunder like a fighting
machine. Theirs is a melodious trill-trill-trill symphony. It’s better to have
a fighting attitude and calm voice. You do what you need to do without bragging
or boasting about it. Most of the problems and issues of life are beyond the
pale of ‘what we need to do’. They arise of our unnecessary tongue-work. In the
absence of bees they are also the bee eaters just in name. But the sky is full
of flying insects. I don’t think they miss bees as much as the honey buzzard
misses its honey.
Dining tables give their best in a bachelor’s house. They
serve multiple purposes of whom dining comes way down the list. The important
functions include ironing, writing, work station of multitudinous tasks,
resting place for things that fail to grab a foothold somewhere else and of
course eating and having tea. To increase the range of its services, I have put
it in the verandah. It’s almost a laden wagon with a little corner empty where
I set my decade and half years old laptop. It works on live electricity, the
battery having quitted its services a couple of years back. In any case, it’s
reasonably good to meet the needs of a small time writer.
I thought the dining table has enough load to my
satisfaction. There is always a scope for some more of the utility; the very
same utilitarian spirit that has over-laden the earth like a creaking,
complaining wagon. The potter’s wasp proves this utilitarian principle. Now, as
I type I have the privilege of looking at it during breaks. The wasp-copter
hovers above and lands with its mud cargo to leave a bit more of it on the
mud-house. The building is coming nicely. The cavity leading to the pupa
chamber is perfectly round. Every time it deposits its load, it takes a rest,
facing me with arrogance, its behind twitching like a wagtail bird all the
while. It’s not scared in the least, I’m sure. An almost unknown writer isn’t
the one to be bothered about too much. Well, builder wasp, you are within the
limits of sanity in not minding me but please mind the bee eaters. They aren’t just
eating the bees as the name says. They are equally good wasp eaters also. I don’t
want an unfinished house on my table. It should be complete. Even potter wasp’s
mud flat is nice if it’s completed and done diligently. So make a good one and
be careful as you set out again for the next round of ferrying the building
material.
The doormat-kitten is plainly a greedy-kitten now. It doesn’t
seem to eat for the sake of the hunger of stomach. I think the hunger in mind
has taken precedence and that is quite serious. It drinks more than it can
digest and recycles it to a yellowish semi-fluid in the garden which isn’t a
good sight. It has to remember that I’m the least suitable to be a pet parent.
I’m not looking for a pet, that’s for sure. I just want it to be a semi-feral
cat that loiters around the garden for half the time within the boundary and
half outside. The food also equally rationed between the domestic part and wild
part. It has but put all its cards at the domestic front. The barn-kitten is perfectly
fulfilling my expectations of a cat. So the broom, not used that much for its
usual operations and is happy to lie in good state, may be given extra
responsibility of putting the kitten fur on its back in order. If it’s a smart
kitten it will get the message.
The wire-tailed swallows have beautiful molten blue swift
wings that allow them to get speedy dives and change of directions. But they
have weak paws. I think they don’t have this word ‘wire’ in their name just for
the wires projecting behind in the tail. They are named so because they have
weak paws that makes it difficult to perch on trees. They are at their restful
most while perched on wires, their paws grasping the straight line and bellies
supported on the line. We have our strengths and weaknesses and theirs is
flying swift and sitting almost painfully, so much so that they prefer airy
love-making loops while in flight. No wonder, they have such strong flying
genes. A few of them are resting on the electricity wires in the street.
They seem to be witnessing something special on the
electricity cable below. The cable crosses the yard. This is non-flying
love-making. But it is shifty and quick. One needs to have quick eyes to spot
the moment. A love-struck pair of scaled munia, drunk with the procreative
spirits of the season, takes the decisive step in their courtship. It’s a
beautiful chocolate colored little bird having a chessboard pattern on its
breast. She is twitching its tail and crouches low in receptivity. He gets on
top for a second’s worth oblivion. The would-be Ma and Pa then fly away to
enjoy some more brief moments of ecstasy. Nothing wrong with brief ecstasies
but they come with huge time span of responsibilities. Their commitment to
their nesting duties is unfailing. And that’s what it makes it so beautiful
unlike we humans who would have the most of the pleasures and avoid the
resultant responsibilities. This is what breeds our agonies. Most of us are
looking for maximum pleasure at the cost of least duties. No wonder,
multifarious agonies abound because it’s impossible to avoid stepping on others’
toes with this approach. So dear readers, enjoy your life as per your notion of
enjoyment but never shirk responsibilities befalling your way as a result.
Looking at the underused, lazy broom, having made to look at
it while working my mind upon the added task to give it some job on the back
fur of the greedy and still lazier cat, I am reminded of my duties also. They
are related to the broom. A confession here. I don’t broom my place on a daily
basis. I know if I attempt it daily, I will do a half-hearted shifty job. I
want to do it thoroughly with entire focus. So I do it after certain intervals.
I am not going to specify the time period between the two broom tasks because
people are very judgmental and they will say something disturbing about the
state of affairs. So here I set out to work with the broom.
A puppy howls painfully for a good interval of time. In
their innocence, the children easily jump out into the folds of sadistic glee.
Their deeds are pardonable. They are a work in progress but the elders can definitely
make them realize the fact of pain to other species. It’s an important parental
duty to make them understand the things like violence and pain in easy ways so
that they grow up to be caring and sensitive human beings.
All species are breeding very fast in the rainy season. It
would be cruel to the lizards to expect them to not do so. They have done full
justice to their numbers in nice proportion to the fleas and mosquitoes. Tiny
lizard babies crawl on the floor. They sometimes almost dive and are dragged
along by the fleas they have pounced upon. That’s the survival matrix. You have
to hide but hiding might be longer in time. It’s but very small in substance.
You have to come out for the flash of a second and take our chance of food. It
lasts a flashing second but in consequence it’s far more important than the long
hours of hiding. All this is a rapidly shifting show. We have to grab our
chances with cool deliberation. It’s always about the balance between the pause
and attack. Go one way and you are done for it. Stay in pause perpetually and
you are sidelined by the forces of nature of its own. Try be a jumping jack all
the time on the attacking, flashing stage outdoors and you are gobbled down by
someone doing the same with a bit more deliberation. So balance out your
innings. Make it a harmonious blend of pause and run.
The broom dismantles a few cobwebs in the corners. How can
the spiders be behind in procreation? They spin a very fine web and know the
value of patience till the moment the impatient flight of some mosquito or fly
lands them in webby straits. A spider evicted from its web is a piteous
creature. Its long shaky legs make it look like an old stilt walker. They move
lurchingly to seek new corners. I have to break the stilts of a few to maintain
inter-species balance. A lizard baby also helps me in the task. It takes a bite
at the long-legged spider. It looks very funny, almost clueless as to what to
do afterwards as the legs pedal quite a bit. Maybe it will manage its breakfast
in a very ungainly way so prefers the privacy under the wooden chest. The
spider gets a new home. It’s the tiny lizard baby. There is a nice probability
that the lizard baby might get a brand new home, the kitten, the barn kitten
especially. The lazy one has accommodation strictly reserved for pure, creamy
cow milk only.
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