In the Good Books of Birds: A Little Nest and the Meaning of Luck

 **3 November 2026**

Housing is a human-centric term—one of the powerful terms that have defined life and living on Earth only from the human perspective.

Food, eating, drinking, birth, death—everything, in fact—are now the natural parameters in human terms. Everything else is auxiliary—subject to whims and fancies.

Systematic sprawl and chaotic sprawl of human housing mean the rest of the species hardly have any rights to shelter on Earth anymore. That merely depends on our sense of charity now, and the sense of charity keeps varying.

A wire-tailed swallow couple comes nesting every year—sometimes they use the ground-floor veranda, sometimes the veranda facing my upstairs writing, reading, living, sleeping, meditating room.

This year they have nested in the terrace veranda, the nest visible from my writing table.

They say having swallows building nests in your house is lucky.

And I would say luck means to be in the good books of a bird couple, to be able to provide them a sense of security.

It means the birds have the natural vibes of safety and security in the environment around you.

And that is as good as having come across a stroke of luck. That is a vouchsafing by birds that the environment you have built around you is not intimidating to them.

And it is a significant thing in its own way.

If your house emanates such safe vibes for a bird couple, already you are lucky.

Yes, there are bird droppings—a slight inconvenience.

But isn't it worth it when we know that it will give birth to a beautiful, metallic-blue-and-white new generation of wire-tailed swallows?

More swallows darting in the sky are far better than fighter planes, drones and missiles cutting across the blue canvas.

As the chicks jingle with excitement to eat more from the beaks of labouring parents, it sounds musical in this quarrelling, noisy world.

They make sounds like the little jingling notes coming from a toy meant for an infant.

And it is a beautiful interjection in the pleasant monotony of my reading and writing.

The world becomes instantly better with birds around you.