Cooling in the elixir of
postmodernist afterglow? There are deft
strokes, steely lines and spools of songs about our achievements. There are
shadowy poles that beat the fog with their pale, penetrating light. But then angelic,
sacred balance and natural laws have been violated and warped. Something
basically wrong has happened with nature during the present scandalous times.
Have you ever seen a sparrow couple
fighting out with another, the latter having set up its nest, mated, laid eggs
and waiting for hatching under the mother’s warm fur and father’s protective
gaze? It does happen now. The force of human touch is too strong on nature.
Everything is getting humanised. And with due respect to the pardonable—beyond
the realm of sin and pity—non-judgemental fight among the innocently
instinct-led lives in the animal and bird kingdoms, we can still brand it as
the most gruesome attack on somebody’s home and hearth to fulfil the basest of
a selfish motive.
They were furiously screeching,
chirping, pecking their beaks into the rivals’ fur mercilessly; their little
claws trying to gouge out the opponents’ eyes. Mind you, it had all human
connotations. Their rumpled feathers and crumpled fur had all the elements of a
bloody street fight among we humans. And what was it for? To grab the nest!
Possibly the fact that the nest had
the smell of human hand in making it had something to do with the things going
nasty like among the supreme species of the earth. It was a barn roof made of
wooden rafters and stone slabs. The box made of plywood was attached to one of
the rafters. It hung there with a broad look of TO LET for free at the uncemented, brick-laid floor below.
Earlier this transgressing couple
never ever cared to look at the abandoned nest, vacant after the previous
hatching, waiting for some laborious sparrow couple to sort out things for
another cycle of home-making by the new entrants. And a diligent couple arrived
looking for a secure home. Finding the odour of long-left nestlings inimical to
their pure, non-short-cutting instinct to procreate and preserve, they worked
to bring it into order for a new homely start. Old bird-drop smitten sinews
were thrown down piece by piece and new ones fixed for a brand new cosy interior.
Then eggs were laid and the expectant moments for hatching started.
Now there was a fight at hand.
Perhaps, it’s the modern day norm to destroy before getting on to the next step
in the journey. The way they—the attacking couple, led by their hissing instinct
which easily overpowered the much mellowed down parental defence—beat out the
parents waiting for the fluid in their tiny eggs to form and shape into
nestlings, made them condemnable as the rogue, brutish couple. Broken shells
and scattered fluid on the ground for ant-feed provided testimony to the charge
against them.
The winners knew that the mourning
couple will take one more day to keep fussing around the site, so unashamedly
they mated on a nearby tree, fully sure of their possession of the nest. The
next day, they started flitting in and out of the sinewed shelter, with spring
in their flight and much mirth in their dives; making minor adjustments to the
grabbed property to satisfy that primordial birdy instinct to make a nest
before drawing out procreative self’s best. Very cleverly they made those minor
adjustments; gave themselves a clean chit and life started again in the nest.
Why have even birds started taking
short-cuts like the humans, stepping over others’ toes in the selfish stampede,
crushing others’ dreams to fulfil personal motives? Very intelligently the
birds around the human world have also picked out a few paying lessons from our
book of practicality.
******
I, a little sparrow, just out of the
nest, and not even baptised, have been a witness to this happening that took
place in the neighbouring man-made nest-box attached to the wood and stone slab
ceiling. Quite surprisingly, I’ve a wonderful memory to narrate the sayings of
Mother almost as she did.
Now, since I’m sitting freely on a
branch, I can narrate the whole story without being constantly chirped, pecked
and haggled to take first lessons in a birdie flight. Mama and Papa aren’t with
me for the simple reason that both of them couldn’t withstand that hit by the
ceiling fan (within a couple of days—Papa on the previous day and Mama the
following day, that is yesterday) circling in air to make air out of air—and
draw blood as well, if chance suited it—over, above, around, beneath the
buffalos and calves in this rectangular barn with three wall sides and one side
open fronting the courtyard.
Well, as soon as we were hatched and
could make out the meaning of her chirp, nestling anecdotes started. For weeks,
we were just parting our tiny beaks to this someone who remained with the ugly,
hairless, soft piece of purplish offspring. Amidst intervals in their frantic,
beakful cargoeing to cater to our unceasing hunger she had some moments of
respite:
“Your Papa and I were one day
frantically scratching our beaks against the plastered walls and the ceiling of
this open-fronted barn. Nowadays, it’s rare to have unplastered walls having
nooks, holes and crevices for us to sneak in and make nest. It’s after all a
sound, solid, smooth world of modern-day man. And there are still lesser trees
with holes in their trunks. So we were desperately trying to undo the smooth
plasterwork with our little beaks. But beaks are no chisels. Though by the look
of it, we felt sure to do with a hole in the walls just below the ceiling,
around the rafter-ends.
“It is, as you can see with some
care not to fall down, a stone slab and wood-beamed roof, so we smelt our
chance here. There are two iron cross-beams. The one that you see just ahead
and the other you can’t—but will see later as you come out to enjoy this big
world. These run along the width and the small wooden rafters supported on the
beams along the length across the three sections bearing the stone slabs make
our roof. Well, that’s our roof. It’s better to know ones roof. It’s as good as
knowing the root.
“All of us need the holes of our
sizes. But just for utilitarian purpose, we can’t become ants to lay eggs.
Harder and harder we worked. Our wings smeared with sweat. We could disturb
spider-webs, plaster and lime whitewash only. There was little to show, except
some dents in the lime-wash, in lieu of our efforts. It’s so hard to make a
home inside some bigger one’s home!
“This farmer that you can steal a
glance from above, tending the buffalos, cutting the grass, working on the
chaff-cutter over there, and grinding wheat in that chakki—the way I do for you in my beak on a tiny scale—in that
flour machine there in the opposite left hand corner, is very kind and
understanding. We birds for make a big noise our little demands. It’s
disproportionate to our worth and feathery stature. But quite paradoxically our
noise does appear a song to the bigger world having bigger brains. So most
often, even our mourning for the dead goes on to be interpreted as a song of
celebration, as if in some nest the prince of the whole birdie kingdom has been
born.
“There are good people, simply like
there are bad people. Are they really good, or they have to put up the
pretention of being good through supposedly good acts, we don’t know. Is
goodness the first flash received in reaction to circumstances; or they have to
labour for it? Well, these questions shouldn’t rob us of our thankfulness we
should feel for this farmer boy. God bless him with all good things in life, a
nice harvest, good wife and long life and a longer trail of children! He knew
it was no song of ecstasy and love. It was a noise of desperation. So he
thought of helping us.
“Then there are various categories
of people. Some don’t listen even if they see it; some listen but don’t act;
some act in a bad way; and some act positively. And God bless him with more
happiness than any other human being. He not only listened but acted well also.
He nailed plywood boards into this beam here in the safe corner. He made this
box fixed to the wood rafter away from all storms and dangers.
“There are but many takers for such
safe house-letting. So a rival couple, in the same position as we, arrived just
as we had staked our claim to the wooden little box by ferrying the
foundational sinews. To defend this fact and to save a position of being held
culpable on account of not defending our right, and thus add to the
lawlessness, we maintained and secured our foothold.
“Now there are some people who can
even repeat an act of kindness even twice; who don’t turn their ears deaf and
eyes blind, hands crippled, legs numb, mind not seized with clapping for the
already opened account of goodness, and heart not basking and drawing moral
solace from that sole deed for days on end. Defying all these simply affordable
luxuries, he took another bitter swig of practicality (or maybe it was really a
sweet pill to him), he made another one over there just to the other side of
the iron cross-beam, where you can see the lower ends of the dangling sinews
from its opening. Ours, however, is more favourably placed. Here you have this
big swing they playfully turn on, and sometimes it gets turned off by itself;
sometimes it starts again by itself and sometimes they have to put their index
finger over that board!”
Well, you might complain that I, a young
sparrow just out of the nest for the first time, my funny purplish body bearing
a funny coat of grey-brown tufts yet to cover the whole of me, have ended up
telling a whole epical story from the book of birdie mythology. But it isn’t
so. It’s a simple narrative Mother told me and my little sister.
I take the onus and burden of being
the elder sibling for the mere fact of my male gender, her relatively slow
development, pathetic shrill cries as well as my outmanoeuvring her to grab
most of the beakfuls Mama and Papa managed to get from somewhere. Where did
they go, I was never able to know. To me the world meant this roof and the barn
floor below; society means the vague indication of hustling and bustling in the
neighbouring nest.
I don’t know why there are so many
different types of birds. Well, there must have been some pattern and reason
behind all this; otherwise all bird parents will make their offsprings look the
same. In that case, it will turn really funny. Elders would feed wrong kids,
mistaking others’ children as their own.
To some physical requirements and
convenience come first and the moral, material duties required to support the
former come later. I don’t exactly understand the real meaning of it. I’ve sort
of crammed it up for the sake of my all-knowing Papa, as he told me on that
stormy night while the big noise from where my parents fetched grains kept we
nestlings awake.
With a mischievous glint of pride,
Mama and Papa bragged that day that the other couple was just the same; while they
were the opposite. Here again I just reproduce the words—for I’ve been born
with a keen memory—chirped by Mama about the meaning of ‘opposite’:
“To us the duty comes first. The
duty to support the pleasure; otherwise today’s pleasure becomes tomorrow’s
pain. So before deciding to bring you two to this nest, we worked on this
opening in the box. It was a bit big and risky for you little ones. We almost
sewed up the opening with grass sinews to avoid a fall, leaving this nice
peephole for you and a door for us. It took us weeks before we finally entered
the marital life. But she, the lady in that other couple, already had eggs in
her furred belly when they came to fight us.
“Hadn’t it been for the farmer boy,
she would have been forced to lay eggs in open much to the shame of motherhood.
So they had no time to secure their box’s opening. While the nature’s call or
miscall struck at her belly and father’s head, they scampered for a couple of
days to get a famished bed for the eggs and the flimsiest of a grass wall
around the opening.
“Thank God you didn’t see the
consequences to the nestlings because then you were mere eggs. The day their
scurrying for food started to shake the nest’s sinew wall, their future seemed
almost lost. More so because the farmer’s son has a domesticated cat. A cat
eats the likes of us! So always be scared of them. Now we hate cats for this
fact. But we can pity her as well for we have wings. A cat can’t fly. So unless
and until we become too careless to allow the cat’s earthly crawling beat our
sky-high winged flight, we need not have fear at the cat front. So as
youngsters, I’ll not teach you both to get crazy about the cat’s claws and make
little, ineffective, hateful noise of the predator. Strengthen your wings. That
is my advice.
“Now, before you both start hating
this farmer boy for petting a cat, let me tell you that there are rats as well.
And rats do a great harm to a farmer’s harvest and interests. So they have to
bear with the nuisance of even a cat. You must have seen her prowling below
from the strong parapet of your nest, gazing with the patience of a sage at our
box. Whenever the cat had time from the rats and its mean mewing at the stray
ones of her type, it stood below our neighbouring nest. It saw a chance there.
The opening was too big. Its mouth brimming with water as it listened to the
meaty sounds coming from behind that thin curtain of sinews and grass specks at
the box’s opening. The nestlings were growing rapidly, as you were very slowly coming
into shape inside your shells. The farmer boy knew the cat’s intentions, so not
to rob him of the credit for his good deed, many a time he shooed her away from
the spot. But he couldn’t beat her out of the house for the simple reason that
there were many rats.
“The nestlings—three of them—had
grown fat as the parents had been feeding them quite well. Whimpering to eat
more and more, they now hit against the grassy protection around the opening.
It finally gave away and two of them dropped like little meaty dumplings in the
form of reward for the cat’s patience. Before the farmer boy could run to their
help, she, more agile, gathered up the freebies and ran towards the courtyard
wall. She wouldn’t let go off the prize even as a stick landed on its back while
it cleared the fence. Now, you might say that he must have forsaken the
criminal. To be fair to him, he must have even thought about doing the same,
for I saw him chasing the offender for a couple of days. He must have started
to become oblivious to the fact that there are rats if not for his mother’s
stern chiding. Even the rats came out of their holes. Since there were rats, so
there had to be a cat. They are still hidden around. Beware of them! Rats are
even bigger enemies because they cause the cat to exist in the house.
“Well, to leave the cat and return
to the tragedy-stricken parents, we can’t add wordings to their grief. The
grassy facade had fallen. It now appeared a gaping hole of death in the far
corner of which cowered the lone survivor. I saw it in the maker’s eyes as he
pitifully looked at the nest from below. We don’t speak but our chirps make us
understand our own chirping—that helps in telling you the story. But for the
unspoken feelings of the humans! They are strange, so I cannot tell you
anything about them. But I found him full of guilt for his design. His eyes
conveyed that feeling to me. O yes, humans’ eyes tell a lot about the things
that aren’t spoken. ‘I should have put up a support along the opening,’ I
guessed him to rue sullenly. But somebody’s good intentions can’t match the
perfection of design required to bring the full fructification of those kind
wishes...”
Here again I’m just repeating the
words, for the meaning gets lost to me. I must reproduce the crammed words. I
feel more confident of my memory than of my wings. Anyway to carry on with my
mother’s story:
“So as a result of the bird couple’s
mismanagement, his deficiency of design and the cat’s simple validation of the
fact that ‘cats not only eat rats, they eat birds with even more relish’ he
blamed himself.
“After mourning the loss of two
hatchlings, they had to still work for the survivor. As we birds forget easily,
the task at hand becomes the real cause for flying, chirping, peeking, etc.,
etc. They showered all paternal and maternal love upon the lone hatchling. The
farmer boy knew that the last one was also doomed to fall, so he tried as many
times to forget that there are rats and kicked the cat, followed by more and
more lingering below the nest to catch the victim mid air.
“He is a very learned fellow, knows
that a nestling—as soon as it gets onto its feet—tries to follow the parents
after they have emptied their beaks into its greedy pout. So the moment the
little one’s shriek of joy announcing the parent bird’s arrival signalled him,
he rushed to the scene to avoid repetition of the gory incident of the past.
“The young bird flapped its
yellowish wings, pecked with its yellow-cornered beak at the saggy, scattered
tufts of feathering. Many a time, it came almost toppling down as it continued
on its repetitive haggling for food as the parents left the nest. Finally, one
day its childish greed found it toppling down. However thanks to its good
stars, there was no cat but the boy who had forgotten or trying to forget that
there are rats. He plays the game of ball really well. I’ve seen him catching
the ball over there in the playground where we get the grains outside the
village. He caught the terrified thing midair. The screechy little drop almost
choked itself to death with fear.
“Its unthankful parents, quite
ignorant of the home-maker’s latest deed of kindness, chirped obscenities from
the branches of the neem tree swaying
to gentle breeze in the courtyard. He knew that any effort to play the role of
father-mother by him would still fall way short of the mark to save the little
nestling—so repressing the urge to keep it—he flew it or rather threw up
towards the hanging branches. It flapped its feathery resistance against a
fall, thus fell less painfully, but cried as if had been shot. Anger and blame
game touched a new high from the parents.
“However, a tree is a tree because
it gives air, shadow and shelter to anyone looking for these. The fact that it
was a tree was proved by another fact that there was another bird on it. It was
but a crow! On the second throw, the wily crow plucked away the offering mid
air and flew away with a thanksgiving cawing. In desperation the boy hit
himself on the head and stoically bore all humiliations heaped by the stolen
kid’s parents screeching, squeaking in pain.
“As penance, he boarded up half of
the opening for a better future and clearer conscience. He came to our nest as
well with the same suspicion about safety and the same set of resolution.
However, both we parents chirped very confidently from our grassy fortress. He
had to convince himself that at least we won’t add to his score of
self-reproach. You were only eggs then dears; and he left us as we were!”
Then we were hatched and grew at the
cost of their parental labour. Then one day, I witnessed that genocide of
egg-breaking by the rogue couple who sneaked into the other nest to set up
their home by force. If not for that foul-smelling oddity life seemed
birdie-small and infinitely enjoyable.
Mama and Papa were feverishly bent
upon bringing each and everything available there in the outer world. The
things and stuff that their beaks cut were easily lost in my gut. We thus grew
bigger. I myself had a vague notion of this fact of growing stronger because
now we made greater noise and ate more. But more was the look of desperation on
the faces of Mama and Papa. We thought we did them a favour by nibbling down
everything they brought. So in order to make them happy in their occupation, we
continued making noises even while our little bellies were full. Getting
irritated, papa sometimes gave us punishing preens. He always talked of
future...when you will grow up...when you will catch a worm yourself...when
you’ll fly. And we siblings wondered why he talked so much about something we
didn’t even know about.
Papa would have been really happy to
see a day when his inexplicable and unmeaningful words dawned on us with their
clear meaning. But then something happened and he was no longer able to repeat
those same words amidst beak-panting spells. It also meant that he no longer
had to labour to and fro for beakfuls of cargo to feed us. Both the above
stoppages and pluggings meant that Mama now had to work doubly hard and change
her soft molly-coddling words into his guiding phrases. ‘The balance’ she said.
The toy that produces air out of air had mothered all these new meanings of a
changed reality.
We birds have this faculty of
minding only the business we are engaged in. However, it is a handicap as well.
Handicap—faculty...faculty—handicap...advantages—disadvantages...profit—loss...loss—profit...paradoxically
these seem to have a peculiarly perverted, juxtaposed, interposed meaning to
me. I can just draw a hazy meaning of what I just ended up telling you. Haa,
haa but that makes me a philosopher.
From the grassy parapet we had a
nice view of the swirling circle. We enjoyed its circular antics. It was so
funny. Mama and Papa but warned each other while going out, looking at it
apprehensively. However, coming in with a full beak is a totally different ball
game. At that time possibly their mind doesn’t mind too much about the funny
thing. And darting in with proud air, Papa was hit by the air- producing toy.
His skull smattered; beak offloaded for the last time. Air catapulted him
against the wall and then he slumped without air in his wings down the wall.
For a few moments the air still seemed wobbling inside him at the foot of the
wall, as if to play with the air from the airy toy.
He seemed all the same except
airless, flightless and a tiny patch of blood on the skull tufts and loss of
few feathers. I wondered why Mama was making such a huge roar over such a minor
difference in Papa’s status. Then I grew anxious perhaps the difference was
bigger than I had initially presumed for he didn’t move. I got worried that the
cat will arrive, but perhaps all rats had gone out of the house that day, so
the cat luckily didn’t reach the spot. It must have gone where all the rats had
gone, perhaps on some vacation.
I learnt a new thing that day: if a
cat isn’t around then it gives enough time for the snaily ants to creep up in
swarms up to the one who has danger at the hands of a cat. And I wondered and
tried to calculate their number; whether they will be able to carry him or not.
Before a cat he seemed so small, but before these ants he looked huge. However,
someone still bigger came to lift him. Seeing my Papa on his palm, I wondered
whether this change of status had brought a new friendship between the boy and
him. It taught me a lesson that if you are a bird but don’t fly due to change
of status, you then become friend to a boy. Mama was in crying fits and we too
imitated her; grew hungry in the process and opened our pleading beaks to her.
Forgetting all her change of mood from Papa’s change of status, she started
with larger beakfuls with more frequency.
During resting intervals, she sat in
the nest and looked sadly at the changed status of the airy toy; which perhaps
had been punished for blowing out airs from Papa’s lungs. The boy also looked
accusatively at it. However, there were mosquitoes and flies below and there
was a buffalo as well who was being tormented by them. The insects, in
dangerous droves, loved its blood. When the insects injected out the blood, it
reacted furiously and that affected the milking process. So it was necessary to
run the airy toy at least during the milking time for the black beauty, who had
put so much of airs herself just because she gave milk to them to become
fatter.
The next evening, when the barn was
buzzing with so much of airs, Mama shrieked painfully and got her status
changed exactly like that of father, except the presence of the milking boy on
the scene. He ran and stopped the airing toy and picked up Mama with even
sadder face. Before that he had run to somehow put air out of the toy. The toy
and Mama went airless, but the buffalo had again too much airs about it. It
kicked the bucket as a drone fly penetrated its skin. Instead of the cat and
ants around, it was milk all over. I also know that if milk is not in the
basket, but on the ground, then a beating follows, for the boy’s mother beat
him away from the place. He had my Mama in his hand. I couldn’t see further
where did they go, but I could hear his mother’s shouting.
Me and my sister were thus left
alone. And how wonderful being left alone is! One can either choose to cry his
guts out or chirp to the happiest hilt. However, we had our bellies empty so we
chose the first option. Our new neighbours in the other nest suspiciously
looked, lest our constant noise portended something accusatory against their
transgression.
The grown-up brown-white bully, with
a patch of black fur on its throat, even pecked at the grass protection about
our nest’s opening to silence us. I remember Ma telling me that it was a male
who looked like that and I instantly matched it with Pa. We cried more fiercely
with wider beaks, thinking the good neighbour had come to feed us. But they had
already split the future’s shapes in present’s semi-fluid, so expecting any
help from them would have been asking too much. Still a kid sparrow doesn’t
know the nitty-gritty of others’ and their own parents, so we cried to get some
food, taking their reprimands as some caring, kind signals. Since I was bigger
than my sis sparrow and ate more than her, I made more noise.
Our noise got the farmer boy’s
attention. Since he was aware of the status of Mama and Papa, he must have
derived our status as well from their status. I with my funny dark brown head
gloated at him as the saviour. Though he had all the looks in his eyes of Mama
and Papa, he couldn’t become Mama and Papa, because he had no wings to fly to
the far place they visited and no beak to carry the food. So I forgave him on
that account.
“You have a big noisy head.
Necessity will force you to come out of the nest and become a sparrow from an
orphan nestling!” he must have calculated in his big head, after all they seem
to run this world with their big head buzzing with God knows what type of
ideas.
I knew he had in all his kindness
thought of saving us by playing a hardy role. But we were just nestlings. And
he won’t be able to grow wings and beak to become Mama and Papa two-in-one. So
it was hopeless from the beginning. He thus left us to face our lonely orphaned
night.
If I could break these shells—I
looked at the egg-shell fragments lying crushed around the grassy
interior—while I was the tiniest of a thing to come out, I can still do the
same. I tried to brace myself up quite funnily.
All the day’s bulbs dangling unseen
outside were put out by turns and darkness crept up in the barn below. Though
the boy lit up a feeble reddish thing on the wall opposite, perhaps to remove
darkness from our scared minds and nest, in addition to the daily purpose of
helping the buffalo see what was what and save her from conjecturing phantoms.
But this was the darkest night we had ever faced. Nothing can be darker than
being parentless. We both kept crying late into the night and when sleep could
no longer wait for the stoppage of our sad songs, it somehow smothered us down.
When our eyes opened, the light bulb
in the barn had been turned off and the bigger one somewhere outside had been
turned on. Right from the word go, we started our day with a spell of fearful and
heart-rending chirping in all its suffering connotations. Somebody must have
said it pretty well that we must not cry out our sorrows too loudly, for in
that case these tend to perpetuate themselves.
A sparrow sat to our side of the
iron cross-beam and looked attentively, hopefully into the nest. I thought it
was Mama who on account of her changed status now looked a bit different. But
these little shards of hope were dispelled when she suddenly darted into the
opening. Shorn of all our past sorrows, we gave a shrill cry of triumph, gave
her a happy look for her new smarter, sleeker—for Mama had pretty worn-out
herself before her last status—appearance and parted our beaks a bit
accusatively and complainingly.
However, instead of love-cuddling
pecks, she gave a painful bite at the yellow, soft edge of my beak. Still
hopeful, I thought maybe she is reprimanding me for some silly mistake I might
have committed during her absence. But a harsher peck at little sis’s softer
and almost tuftless violet body convinced me that either it wasn’t Mama or if
it was she indeed, then in this new avatar as the beholder of a new status she
didn’t need us or at least won’t feed and love us.
She was later joined by another one.
It was a young, strong male. I couldn’t help appreciating this new look of
Papa. However, he was even harsher in his mistreatment. Maybe, he was angry
that we hadn’t changed like them. But then I became sure they were not Mama and
Papa, but some nest-grabbers like I had seen in my neighbourhood.
As the stronger elder sibling, I
tried to protect the property, lest Mama and Papa returned to chide me for not
protecting the home and hearth properly in their absence. Little sis cowered in
a corner, while I fought them peck for peck. But I was just a kid sparrow who
hadn’t taken a single flight, hadn’t taken a single beakful of my own. So
inevitably I was finally dislodged from my precarious perch on the sinew
rampart.
I knew there are rats, so making the
presence of a cat quite logical. The floor below seemed an open jaw of a cat.
So I flapped my wings with all my hungry belly’s might. I just beat them like I
had been flapping inside the nest purposelessly. But then there was ground
beneath my little paws and now I needed to avoid getting grounded. So naturally
my feeble, famished flapping was bound to follow. To my surprise, it came
naturally. A sparrow is destined to fly some day, I think. But then flying
isn’t the only thing in life.
Life stuck up in my chirpy throat, I
just flapped dizzily without knowing the path or direction. Much to my first
shriek of joy for the last many-many hours—now it had started to appear like I
hadn’t chirped happily even once since that doomed rupture in the shell brought
me into this world of sorrows—I found myself landing on the wings of the
air-maker which fortunately wasn’t making air at that time—perhaps it had
stopped to witness my first flight—otherwise my status too would have changed
like that of my parents.
Now I cried for my little sis to
come out. They were having a good time pecking at her soft, half-furred body. I
myself was disappointed with my look in the new light. I appeared quite funny.
A muddy greyish cast. My almost fully furred body carried the striking
vulgarity of a yet-to-take-flight nestling. But then I remembered I had taken
my first flight and that too quite successfully. So I convinced myself that in
the department of looks also I will perform better after my consequent flights.
They then threw out my little sis
also. From the first moment, I cried words of encouragement. But she was too
small, soft and feeble. Her first flight was surely going to be a failure. She
wasn’t that mature to know that she had wings with a purpose to fly.
However, knowing the wings and
putting desperate efforts to use them don’t mean a successful first flight,
which in majority of the cases robs further chances of a retry. Why? Because
there are rats and that means there are cats also. She struggled harder than I
could have ever expected. Just a few more morsels daily for the last weeks and
she definitely would have made it with her will power!
Now I held myself guilty for eating
her share and thus robbing her of that extra power which would have ensured
success in the first flight itself. That is, in reaching a destination, safe
from the cat, even if it means to land on this airy toy that takes air out of
sparrows to give air to the buffalo.
Alas, she fell! Not vertically
straight that would have been humiliation. She flew slantingly, plummeting down
dangerously, out of the barn’s all-open front except for the two supporting
columns. She almost hit the middle of the neem
trunk in the courtyard.
“Clutch at the bark...clutch at the
bark...dig your little claws into it!” I cried at the top of my voice.
However, it required a few more
ounces of strength. But her long flight, longer than mine and I felt beaten on
this account even though she ate lesser, had sapped her of the tiny reservoir
of her power. She just slumped along the rough, dark-brown surface of the main
trunk. There she sat on the ground by the trunk; her beak panting like the
world outside was airless.
Some rat must have played truant in
some corner of the house for it created ripples in the cat’s catty self and she
ran towards the scene. Screeching a warning, I threw myself out from my perch.
But instead of landing on the cat’s cursed head, I found myself clinging from
the upper part of the trunk, where it branched off into many other parts to
allow we birds some shelter and airy swings.
She proved that she was a true,
unerring and unsparing cat. Much to my consternation even the farmer boy wasn’t
there to punish the culprit with a hit at its bum while it leapt over the
fence. Enjoying the regal spectacle of the cat hunting a prey, my neighbours
were chirping meticulously from the branches above. I don’t know whether they
were throwing obscenities or were just playfully chirping.
My initiation into the outer world
had been quite an ordeal. I knew this new world required one more effort to
reach higher in the foliage and from there watch out for the new prospects that
might exist for a tiny sparrow like me. So drawing out the last ounces of
strength from my hungry belly and bracing up my aching wings, I put up my third
effort.
This time but I almost failed. I came
hurtling and crashing down the branches to anchor my little paws into some
support. I had almost given up but then luckily found myself clinging from a
low hanging branch. After panting and resting for long minutes, I decided to
give another try. This time I was satisfied as I found myself perched on a
bough in the middle of the canopy. And from my dear place, away from the cat’s
reach, I gathered my wits to collect some thoughts about this new world.
“So this is the new world Mama and
Papa ferried food from!” I thought about their trials and tribulations.
The tree wasn’t as big as I had
supposed it to be. It didn’t look as interesting and mysterious as I had
imagined it to be. The neem just
appeared a bigger nest on a larger scale. There were high-low zigzagging walls
of the houses, where there were more people like our own farmer boy. Maybe,
there were rats and many more cats also. And there was this dull-bluish
ceiling—like our very own roof—seemingly very high overhead. I suppose it
wasn’t as high as it seemed, for it appeared to be supported by the upper edges
of the walls at the farthest corner this bigger nest.
I mustered up my wings, thinking
that maybe I’ll be able to take flights long enough to take a peek around this
larger—though not as big as I had thought earlier—nest to find Mama and Papa in
their changed status. But the earlier efforts had been too daunting and
tiresome. So I completely abandoned the idea and put all my faith in my vocal
cords. Quite surprisingly, even with my hungry belly, I could cry quite
noisily. This I banked upon to carry my chirping message to my parents. Sitting
there in the branches of the neem
tree I cried:
“Mama and Papa, do you hear? I have
successfully taken my first flight as you wished me to. But the bad thing is
that the little sis failed. Weak and small as she was. Her failure meant that
the cat took flight with her!”
I was loudly chirping all that had
happened in the course of the time since their change of status.
I was fully confident that this
newer bigger world wasn’t big enough to stop my voice from reaching their ears.
But it didn’t change my status or position in any way. Quite unlike the bulb on
the barn wall, this bigger bluish roof had its bigger, far brighter bulb. Quite
surprisingly, it changed its position since the time I had started to cry my
guts out. Still more interestingly, the shades of its light also changed
colours.
My constant screaming did attract
some attention. The way they were cawing they must be crows, I thought. I
recalled a story Mama had told me one day about them. I immediately knew it
didn’t portend well, for like cats they too are enemies with the added faculty
of flying. A sparrow has to outmanoeuvre them in variously agile flying
pattern. However my options were so few that I decided to wait and watch.
The crows then started quarrelling
for me, as if none of them had a son of theirs and they wanted to adopt me. The
black monsters made it a virtual battlefield on the tree. Now I realised that
there still was a bigger world beyond what I saw, for the farmer boy surely
must not have been there because he didn’t rush to the noisy scene in his
courtyard. Had he been somewhere in the bigger nest, he was sure to come out to
inquire. And that would have saved me.
“Maybe he is chasing the
cat—completely forgetting that there are rats—with little sis in its mouth!” I
thought.
“Am I so dear to these darkies that
they are fighting it out among themselves to lay claim on me?” now I got some
little traces of pride.
Then a bigger claimant with a larger
instinct to patronise me hovered over the tree. In contrast to the blacks, its
colour was brown-greyish. Its size was also bigger than the crows. But those
murderously searing, searching eyes looked at me with such force that I felt
attracted, exalted and scared at the same time.
One other thing, it also made me
sure that it wasn’t just a rogue, outcaste crow painted differently as a
punishment and given bloodied eyes also due to beatings. It had razor-sharp,
pointed, hooked beak. The closer it hovered, more differences struck me and my
fear plummeted high into the blue roof. It had deadly claws which far
out-sharpened the crows’. Now I realised that its claim on me was the
strongest. What made the claim strongest? There was no likewise rival to blunt
the sharp edges of its hooked beak and talons. I knew it had all the power to
mould my status the way it wanted. I felt a strong surge of nostalgia for my
parents’ memories.
“If he takes me then my status as my
Mama’s and Papa’s kid will be changed!” I cried attention to all the cawing and
fighting darkies.
My warning little chirps, but, went
in vain. They, after all, were so busy in fighting it out among themselves.
Their love for me was forcing them to give each other bloodied noses. And then,
before I could vent out my next warning, those strong talons just snatched me
away. It happened so swiftly that my little eyes couldn’t even smack their
lids.
As he rose higher, with me squeezed
in his talons, I cried fools at the blacks.
My sound must have been stronger this time, for they got the message and
followed us almost crying with tears in their eyes. They made all types of
threatening cawing, flew swiftly with menacing agility. Even the great fiery
bulb—it had changed its position, I got to know while squeezed in those
claws—seemed cheering the new claimant’s ownership of me.
One of the sharp talons was curled
around my neck restricting my verbosity; others were dug feebly but still
tightly in my feathering, giving sharp pain. However, that thrill of bigger,
longer flight was giving me such pleasure that I forgot even the pain. The
passing cool air, cooler than I had ever felt it, sang in my ears. Clutched
topsy-turvy, I had such an exciting vision of the fleeting panorama of this
still bigger nest spread far and wide.
There was also that exalted feeling
about beating the blacks with the help of this mighty bird. They were left
behind and retreated to their smaller world. While travelling trapped in those
claws, I imagined all types of fanciful things about the world he was taking me
into. Although this world we were flying through seemed limited always up to
that line of tree-tops with the blue roof supported on top of the branches. But
surprisingly, we were never able to reach the end, so I just waited patiently
to come to the front of a newer world.
But all my hopes were dashed as—even
before crossing the threshold of this bigger (but not that big) world which
seemed just a few paces away by that line of trees across the fields—he stopped
in this very world. I was disappointed about the landing place as well. It was
a huge strange tree. A dry, leafless tree of this new world, as if my
carrier-friend had eaten away all the foliage. At its top was a thick nest of
prickly twigs, rags and wood pieces. And mind you, it was stinking like hell.
Into this he dumped me. I fell on a dried piece of meat and a little bone which
hurt me.
Aawo...now I realised that the big
bird needed a playmate for his lonesome, brooding nestling put up so high at
this solitary place on this charmless tree. Instantly my new friend, almost as
big as a crow but looking so funny in his shabby feathering, came to play with
me. I also reciprocated his friendly welcoming leap of joy at me. However, his
pecking was severe in comparison to my own caressing and harmless one. I but
forgave him just on account of his inability to play softer, given his bigger
size and talons to keep it down to my sparrow level.
He was really eager to play with me.
His father—or was it mother, I doubted while playing—looked with parental glint
of satisfaction from a nearby dead branch. Then I began to bleed at various
points of my first coat of feathering. Still I tried to play, though with time,
it became a struggle to defend myself from further cuts and bruises. My
playmate was too big and almost toyed with me. I kept on complaining noisily.
But he was all eager to play and didn’t listen to me at all.
Here we have to stop our narrative for I’m on the verge of fainting due
to this bloody game of his...aye...aye...I am perhaps losing in the game!
