Peacock, the Beggar

 

The fields around my village are splashing with as much green paddy as possible. Monsoonal sun across the corners of the 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. Driven by intensive agriculture, born of costly inputs and decreasing landholdings, the 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 the food chains. So guys, it’s just green paddy and the poisoned soil below.

 

Peacocks thrive on insects in the fields. All insects gone to the killing effects of the agro-chemicals, where would the foodless poor peacocks 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 so many times during our childhood. Now the last or second last generation of these destitutes, who rarely get an insect in the fields, has descended 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 still gives a chance to get them 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 descend and enter the inner reaches of the house just to make its presence felt through its luxuriant plumage. Once the roti is put in small pieces before it, it has to chuck up the offerings as fast as possible because crows line up in their accusing harsh tones, blaming it for being a transgressor who has infringed upon their rights. Crows are very clever. Some of them get behind its plumage and take a pick at its feathers to distract it. One defensive look behind and a few pieces 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 'namakharam'--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!!!