The pied piper and the horde of hungry mice

So Friday, August 25, 2017 has earned its bit of dirty history. History by the way is concerned about its load only, good or bad doesn’t matter, these are our own convenient specifications. More than three dozen lives lost, hundreds injured, cars and vehicles burnt, media attacked and law and order scattered to pieces. The moment Dera Chief Baba Gurmeet Ram Rahim officially turned just a rapist human, a common criminal, named Gurmeet, his followers, shocked and not able to digest this humanly avatar of the demi-god, went on rampage in Panchkula around the CBI court which pronounced the judgment.

They were crying, pelting stones, burning whatever came their way, getting tear gas into their eyes, got struck by sticks, and finally absorbed bullets as well into their bind faith. Pitaji, beloved father as they call him, should have been allowed to stay beyond the normal laws for common people, they expect.

Another matter that it took 15 years and 200 hearings for justice to shine. Well, that’s understandable given the ways of stalling justice in the country, especially in the case of the strong and the mighty. However, better late than never. So we can safely call him a rapist now. And address him by his maiden name, Gurmeet, instead of adding the golden-weighted superlatives before and after.

First it was Asha Ram Bapu, followed by Sant Rampal, some Ramvriksha Yadav in Mathura, and so many others. Godmen, in the manner they can hijack the common rules and regulations of the land, are beyond the state. Just to beat your head about this particular Baba and the ones named above would be equal to shedding tears over just one of the symptoms of a bigger malady. The question isn’t about why this particular Baba was born and came to acquire such a cult status so as to challenge the state itself. It will be more pertinent to ask, why such Godmen are born in India. Every street, every locality, every village, town and city has its group of influential Godmen who dispel the evil, fetch the best of boons, make you the luckiest person on the earth. Your hard work, your perseverance, your education and skills, your penance for a cause coming at the bottom of the list required to get success or reach your goal.

In a country where there are billions squeezed for space, for a living, there are bound to be trillions of broken dreams, unmet goals and a Milky Way type of crowded aspirations. It’s plainly about people to resource ratio. More people, few resources, so a fight, few smiles, more tears, simple maths. But in the muck of survival all this boils down to being lucky or unlucky, the two being capable of twisted and remedied by expert hands. So out of the billions, with trillions of shattered dreams, they go in groups to abandon themselves on some holy feet, in respective regions. Out of the trillion shattered dreams, and lifelong, and ongoing struggle to survive, millions are in anyway at the point of hatching some long-aspired fruit. Even the most skewed law of probability will give chance to millions out of trillions. The moment the chicken is hatched, which would have happened in any case irrespective of Baba x, y, z or no Baba at all, the Baba grabs the credit. The maths accumulates the load of appreciation, subtracts the unmet aspirations almost negligibly as the unremediable fruits of the sins of past life. The Baba has no onus to prove. He can take just the credit for the millions savings out of the trillions of broken dreams. In any case, one minus from Baba means one addition to the followers of some other Baba. It keeps on shifting till the hatching takes place. The credit goes to the last Baba where the poor poultry cock or hen is caged with at the moment.      

Beyond the trials and tribulation of a terribly overpopulated society, where deprivation is bound to prevail given the skewed people to resource ratio, there are other factors which boost a cultman’s chances to acquire superhuman clout, wealth and influence.

The caste system in India means a major part of the society has been treated as subhuman species for thousands of years. This inherited poverty, deprivation and low socio-economic standing leaves a huge mass of people who, their fathers, father’s father, and so on, have been ill-treated like they are mere goats and pigs. As the casteless and creedless mass of a Baba’s followers they feel equal like anyone else around. They feel a full human instead of the fractions across the ages. Like a long drag on Bidis makes them forgetful of the miseries of life, the visits to congregations and gatherings at ashrams make them feel unyoked from the heavy burden of caste they drag. A low caste means you are low, always, it drones in your head, all the time. You are low, you are low, keep your head down, further low, smile even when he spits on your face, tweaks your ears, takes puns at you, gives a kick at your poor arse to uplift his spirits, still you have to smile. You have to wear an unaffected mask, while the shitty life moves on. Here, at the Guru’s feet, they put their masks to get some fresh air. Here they become they, the real, un-lowed, their genetically crooked spines stretching to a high, the slouching shoulders, the vestiges of low, squaring for some moments to feel like a bird getting its wings untied to fly, like an unyoked beast of burden getting allowed to run free in a pasture land. No wonder the followership crosses all limits in devotion and loyalty.   

Drunk husbands beating their wives and squandering away even their meager resources is the common most fact in the struggling section of the society. Drugs and alcohol symbolize the worst form of the evil to the poor women. No wonder, as the Babas at least ask their followers to refrain from drinking, the women feel they cannot have a bigger well-wisher. So you have miles-long queues of poor, condescending women, waiting to kiss the feet of the holy man who is at least trying to make their menfolk quit drinking and correct their behavior.

Poverty has its alternate truths in a reversed world. When you decide to get healed just by the Baba’s touch, of course there will be some immediate improvement, which in any case becomes a miracle. It simply is Placebo effect. Psychologically you believe and the body responds positively. So the Baba’s shower healing blessings, the suffering mass decide to get healed, and healed they get in the short terms at least. It then becomes a necessity to keep the blessings going, no matter you keep taking medicines along the way, get treatment, spend money in hospitals, but once you decide that it is the effect of your Baba’s blessings, everything you do becomes a carrier, a mere instrument, of the holy man’s blessings.

The invisible, unknowable, unattainable God is too far. Convenience needs a Godhead nearby, whom you can see, touch his feet, kiss his robe. So the cult-men replace God. They are near and more effective than God himself. And people want their God to be nearer.   

At the management level, it’s primarily about money. Anything purportedly meant to do everything with religious financing is beyond the tax and revenue regime of the country. You just make a Hindu religious trust, you then govern your own financial destiny. The rules and regulations of India don’t have anything to do with this territory where all types of black, white, yellow and red money flow in unchecked torrents. And where there is unaccountable money, rest of the vices easily follow. With money you can easily become God. You can keep people’s dreams alive by giving them as much as a free lunch now and then. With your opulence and grand show, you can create stars in damn shitty famished eyes. It’s very easy to become the God of hungry frustrated souls. There are millions to whom even a favour only to the extent of free weekend meals in a community feast turns more significant than God himself. Money pulls the clout, it builds the loyalty. There is simply no other weightier factor. So with all the donations to religious trusts and gifts of money, land, dollar, ruppes, beyond the pale of tax and revenue norms, within no time Babas become super-rich. With money rest of the journey becomes very easy.  

Once they have billions of money with millions of cemented hungry loyalties around them, politicians come scavenging like dogs on dead bodies. Politicians are comfortable with mafia, murderers, smugglers, drug dealers, human traffickers, as long as they get votes for them. The Rapist Baba has a long history of alliance with all the major political parties. A rape charge undertrial gets donations to the tunes of hundreds of millions by the Haryana government, the state’s ministers bow down to touch the Baba’s feet, the Chief Minister attends the Baba’s functions, what else the common people need to further convince themselves about the divinity of their father figure. In every constituency the Baba has thousands of diehard supporters to whom matters of faith come to an end in the Baba’s thick beard. They are the ones who decide the winner and the loser during the state assembly elections. They give money to Baba, the Baba gives them some food and occasional shelter for devout gatherings with the same money, the rest he uses in building a fleet of super-luxury fleet and making movies in which he slays the evil as the messenger of God. The government makes his movies tax free so that the devotees feel flattered.   

A distant relative of mine fought the last assembly election in Haryana on the INLD ticket. The Baba but, expecting a turnaround in his favour—he was facing a CBI inquiry—decided to go with the BJP. It was open support by the way. This INLD candidate lost by just 2 votes. He, belonging to the influential Jat community who hold huge clout in the social hierarchy, still cannot forget that night when he reached the poor house of an old man in his village. The old man was an OBC, lower in the caste hierarchy, but was rich in the number of votes. They were 8 in all in the little house. All would have been well, given the contestant’s dominant caste status and the fact that both parties stayed in the same village, and the OBC man being wise enough to know the adage, if you have to stay in the village don’t take panga with the crocodile. It would have gone well if not for the fact that the poor family had eaten countless free lunches and dinners at the Baba’a dera, congregation halls, where frustrated females from the countryside get a chance to get out of the loops of patriarchy to have a casual fling, a paramour with some bites of free food. The branches, which had purchased their loyalty apart from making Baba a symbol of God to them, serving as one-stop point of entertainment, freedom, fling, food, frolic, faith and dignity.

With folded hands the old family patriarch, with tears in eyes, his voice shaking, said, “Chaudhri Sahab, you can kill us if you want. But we just cannot vote for you. It’s the order of our God.”

The poor Jat was defeated by two votes.

This is what makes the Babas like him so potent. Politically. And once you are so significant in the scheme of political things, the politicians of the land will even stoop so low as to touch the feet of a rape undertrial.

Only money can buy such loyalty. Make laws to stop religious funding which makes them mini-empires within the state. If you cannot do that, in greed of clump of votes, then please stop cribbing about the Baba. There will be so many others following him.

Deadly injured mosquito

It’s the last week of August. Humidity tickles the nerves instead of the heat. The Monsoon is about to complete its trip. Once again, in this part of Haryana, it is leaving with lot many promises unkept. Deficit rainfall is the norm here. In any case, the Monsoon hardly abides by the law of averages. It’s either too much or too less. Nature has, after all, lost its equanimity, its level-headedness. It’s irritated and grossly impulsive. The nature, I mean. And rightly so.  

As the light peered through a humidity-soaked sky, I decided to make the most of this cool morning. Reading under the open overcast skies has its own charm. While the world got up, yawned, stretched its arms, got ready to dab into the birth-time energetic spirits to go jogging and exercising, I decided to pick up this nice book and use my time in the best suitable way I can think of, reading.

The light picked up from across the bluish dark curtain hung over the skies. A cool breeze blowing, carrying the invisible vestiges of the rain the previous evening still looming in thin air. It appeared like it stopped raining just five minutes back. The words and sentences had a lucid meaning. It was like writing on a clean slate. The brain, after all, is unclogged of extra garbage at this time. The book is touching. The sentences fetch deeper meanings than they carry at any other time of the day. I read with a trace of smile on my lips. In fact, I felt like I was doing a holy deed early in the morning, like a sage sitting over yagna. I got attuned to the phenomenon, of literature, of reading.

If there were sages in ancient India, there were demons also, the fabled rakshsasas, who threw meat and bones into the holy fires. They laughed with their deep, rumbling peals of guffaws. An avid reader is the most a modern human can come close to be a rishi, sage, of ancient India. And the demons? Well, there are countless. In millions, and of course, billions. Mosquitoes. The carrier of death, fever, dengue, chicken guinea and what not. They buzz with multiple layers of preening sounds that crawl over your skin, bruising and itching it long before it strikes with its bloodthirsty snout. It can be easily ultrasonic. You can feel the drone’s deadly hum from a distance long before your eardrum alerts you to the hurtling missile in your direction. On top of that they are blood thirsty. Who knows, all the demons of the past may have turned into mosquitoes of the present.

Here it droned to spoil my morning. Dengue-wallahs bite early in the morning, my alert system sent a warning against the poisoned missile. I saw it then. A huge one, almost as big as a house fly. I’m sure it must have bullied a few houseflies on the way to its mission. The chopper’s buzzing wings cut across the chorus of chirping sparrows on the courtyard wall. In a panic mode, I took a swipe at it. Guess with what? With my book man. What better weapon a bookworm can arrange on such a short notice? The elegant piece of literature turning into a weapon of defense! The rascal deftly dived, enjoying the catapulting rolls in the swirls of air sent down by my papery weapon. Even a mosquito is too good for a book these days. Uffs.  

I jumped up from my chair, knowing fully well that it will surely succeed in its mission if I keep sitting. Still eager to keep the meanings in sentences clearer like before, I started walking and reading in leisurely circles, pacing up and down the courtyard, sure that the deadly projectile is ineffective against shifting objects. I even took consolation that now it was doubly beneficial, reading-cum-morning walk. And here it was again. A super-mosquito, I recoiled with fear. I saw it just about to land on my hand decently holding the book. These are not the times of niceties after all. This time I saw it clearly. It had the ill-famed black and white bands across its hull, the deadly enemy, the dengue one.

Reading took a backseat and the revenge started. It was too big to get invisible into the cowardly mosquito anonymity in thin air. It had grown too big for its cowardly skin. Its confidence protruded through its bubble-strong body. I tracked it to the end of the wall. While I struck it against the wall, the instinct stopped me from using full force to avoid a dirty palm having a crushed mosquito carcass. The hand moved with the agilest movement, but struck with minimum force against the wall. May be I wanted to injure it critically and enjoy a slow death with no blood on my hands. It was too big to go into that last moment’s topsy-turvy dive to escape. And of course sometime you hit the nail on its head, hit the jackpot, win the lottery, win the best girl in the college in your favour. Similarly, you hit your target, the mosquito, in the second attempt only.

With the scared anticipation of a high school girl waiting for her result, I took away my palm. The feeling was worth winning a million in a lottery. My trophy lay against the wall. Not crushed. The force was perfect to send the idiot into a coma. One of its wings broken, the other jutting out, some legs broken, the rest swished together, its deadly snout projecting out as if in utter pain. One of its antennas moved a bit, to make it icing on the cake that it wasn’t instant death. I saw the black and white checked pattern on its body. What a kill man! Couldn’t believe my luck early in the morning.

The rose and the fire in its last lap around it

Status quo can be easily carried. It can be dragged. A slow fire can smolder over a long period of time, before bursting into flames. But flames have to die fast; they cannot go on at the slow pace of cold wars. So actual wars chuck out their own selves very easily. Intrigues but can drag on for months, years and decades, like they have been dragging in Kashmir since independence. Things picked up for a possible conclusion after 1989. After the eruption of violence, again there was a lean period, when Kashmiris had languorous dreams of Azadi, ISI counted their chances and laid out more elaborate schemes, and India tried to convince itself that Kashmir indeed is an inseparable part.

In the status-quoist mode, the issue can drag for another two decades, and another two, because that’s its nature. It sustains, it persists. It stays like that dull pain that allows you to carry through the day, staying there in the subconscious, and then striking now and then to claim the fact of its existence. Clear cut fractures don’t persist, because they aren’t tolerable, they cripple. It plops out. Either they stay or you. It’s either you or them. In status quo, all exist, and struggle through mildly painful air. Full blown pain forces us to stop somewhere.  

Well, it’s a point of no return for India. A belligerent India cannot accept the idea of independent Kashmir even if the whole world turns against it. It’s final. Period. And with India’s growing stature at the international level, and Pakistan getting isolated, American’s need for India as a buffer against China, it’s almost impossible that Kashmir issue will get too much of support internationally. But then simmering status quo again is bleeding India at many levels. Its feet get a drag.

Somehow the recent flare up, the real fire instead of the suffocating, irritating smoke, will drag the issue to a fast conclusion. Because how long a fire will burn? It eats itself. The only chance for the fire to survive in the long run is in smoldering slowly, taking rationed sips from the fodder of issues. So the burnout will stop. Well, unless India allows the post-burn hiatus to again turn into simmering status quo like it happened after 1996, when violence plummeted down after touching its bloody peak.

A fire is bound to burn to its finish. Hate can persist, but not all out bloodletting. Hate will persist for centuries, but real actions of violence have to meet their bloody end. The violence in Kashmir has touched a new high. If it goes on increasing, it will become irrelevant after some time. At least Kashmiris, if not India and Pakistan, will realize the futility of it because they are the people involved with real flesh and blood in the issue, the two other entities are the bloodless and boneless states. Peace will appear a good option then. What else can show the true colors of peace than the bloody colors of war? Wasn’t UN born from the ashes of two world wars?

The paradise is burning. It could have gone on smoldering for decades. But is that life? Stone pelting, mass protests, pellet guns, civilian casualties, blinded teenagers, missing youths, every Kashmiri on the boil with stone in hand and with a sense that they are giving their best for freedom. The worse it gets, the brighter it burns, the good it turns for India. Fire eats itself in the long run, it will stop on its own ashes. It will be worst for the present Kashmiri generation, but good for the next one that will build their lives afresh on the ashes of burnt dreams, and still better for India to come out of the status quo. It’s another matter if you can really celebrate a swanky house built on a mass grave. If you can, then you have all the right to feel victorious.

The flare has picked up to its conclusion. As the last of the crazy souls leap into it, holding to the most futile idea of independence, as the paradise gets wilted, as the heaven turns to hell, fiery tongues lollop higher, only to be crashed onto their own ashes.

Status quo is tolerable, even with incidents of violence here and there. But a full throttle fire has to die down. It dies when it has consumed everything. As they say, death is the beginning of birth. Let’s hope for a new beginning.

Dead vultures and well-ground meat

There were times when we had vultures in north India. Beyond their invectivized metaphorical usage in language, they flew too high, freely in the bluish depths of skies. Floating, their wings sprawled out, in utter piece and calm. They were too far and safe. They were detached and landed only when there was something lying with no more life, no more play in the hustle and bustle of things. Something beyond sweat, blood and gore; something totally passive to the mucous gore of life.

They descended matter-of-factly. Cutting the air with their sun-parched wings, coming to the world of we humans, to play their part in the natural scheme of things allocated to them. Beyond the bloody, brutal and sordid pulls of their pointed, hooked bills into the dead innards, they appeared self-effacing, modest scavengers. Even saintly with their sad, drooping eyes. I remember a whole fat, lifeless cattle turn into just a skeleton in some odd hours, leaving no scrape of flesh around any bone, and no foul, rottening odor later on. The dogs took onto the bones, lost in the mirage of pacifying hunger from the deepest depth of a well where there might not be any water.

Then Diclofenac, a cattle medicine, came. The more the vulture did their duty for the dead, the more the death did its duty on them. The vultures lost their skies. Only mankind’s steel birds have a right to fly that high. So we don’t have vultures now. Only airplanes can go that high. The ethereal blue is calm and steeped in history. Of course the dead cattle need to be disposed off. The farmers bury these in shallow sand pits. The dogs pick up the trail, dig out and chew on the sandy rot. And a huge cumbersome cloud of foulest odor clumsily reaches human nostrils to remind them of the species which is extinct now. Not too many mind though.

The dogs now go to the metalled road to meet their famous death, the much anointed dialogue, kutte ki maut, which is rarely natural. Death and its agent need not push themselves to grab their share on the road. It’s National Highway 334 B running through the densest rural and town settlements across central Haryana, starting from Western Uttar Pradesh, crossing Yamuna and going across Haryana from east to west. A year back it was just district road. But then they suddenly changed it into a national highway without adding to its dimensions. It’s just two-laned without any lane divider. Heaviest to the lightest vehicles ply bumper to bumper day in and day out.

The truckers, otherwise forbidden by the law to use it, have grabbed its link to Rajasthan and southern Haryana, with even more greed than a hungry vulture of decades. There is no toll tax on this link. It saves them 1200 rupees. This much money matters. Even the time it saves also matters. So human safely is lost in the smoke exhaust. Overloaded trawlers ply gleefully. It’s a journey of overs: overload, overspeed and overgreed. Transport companies put up rewards for the fastest drivers. In the mad rush, rules, regulations, care and concern take a back seat. And people die in road accidents. Almost daily there is a fatality. In a neighboring village, two brothers, one 17 and the other 19, going to their fields to prepare for physical tests for army recruitment, were crushed to death early one morning. The tragedy isn’t the odd one out. There are many. But they get buried into the tar under speeding, burning wheels.

The dogs too, knowing that there are no vultures, come under the heavy wheels to get crushed to a pulpy, well-ground meat. Even bones get ground easily, the vehicles are so heavy after all. Years back, when there were vultures, a dog hit by a vehicle, would be at least dragged to the roadside trench. Vehicles were sparse, wheels were smaller, and people had time to at least respect even a dog’s dead body to throw into the roadside pit. Then the vultures would take up, efficiently, smoothly, surgically.

Now right after the first hit, you cannot tell whether it was a dog, a cat or swine. Wheels are endless. It gets crushed within minutes, first to a juicy broth, then to dry sponge, the blood absorbed by the burning tar under hot wheels. It’s dry before you realize. The eddies of smoky wind let loose by tyres then puff away the last grains. It’s quicker than even the biggest horde of vultures. No man, possibly there is no need of vultures now. Metaphorically though vultures exist, thriving in fact, as we add to the haramzaadgi in us.

The Little Sparrow

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!