Sharing my Space with some Natural Claimants

 

Time is frozen in the leafy green verve of a fresh breezy morning. The night blooming jasmine is clad in bright green new set of leaves, after the spell of autumnal detachment when it shed each and every leaf and looked like a brooding old man. Now it's young again and sways to intoxicated gusts of monsoon winds. A beautiful moment gets copied one year down the line. The natives return. It's a spotted munia couple. They are striking rusty brown birds having a chessboard pattern on the breast. They trill even more beautifully.

It's the same branch and the same section of twigs where they had set up a nest last year. I am sure, it's the same couple. If I am right then birds seem to have more fidelity than humans because meantime millions of men and women must have parted ways on bitter notes over trivial, funny things. Well, none of my business to comment on our foolish ways.

I enjoy the making of this irregular globular nest. It's a masterwork in deception. To a predator it would appear like a broken, abandoned nest. In reality, the eggs will be safe in an inner chamber. The father ferries big sinews of grass. He has to pay for his lusty overtures...haa haa. The mother is busy in decorating interiors. She has to pay even bigger for her emotional surrender. Last year, the hatching wasn't successful. A squirrel came—she still does—visiting the tree. She is just a guest, not a resident of the tree. I enjoyed the sight of her old-womanish tiktikking. Little did I know they are egg stealers also! So she must have been the culprit last time.

With this addition to my knowledge about the ways of squirrels, I’m better prepared this time. I will keep an ear for the agitated notes of the little birds to find out the cause of distress, like I did yesterday around noon. Busy in writing, I heard the plightful softest of notes and ran out to find out the squirrel scouting around the new house in making. Recalling the last year episode, I chased it away, lost my meditative balance also by the way. What to do? Have to support the underdogs. She is no longer a welcome guest. A birdie life saved is more important than a squirrel missing a meal. It seems so at least till I cross the final hurdles to beat the paradoxical plays of duality to see everything in the same way. Well, till then the squirrel has a tough time I tell you.

The spotted munia is a little docile bird that can manage faintly trilling notes even at its agitated most. Wait, the tree cannot miss its typical birdie song and dance. They co-share the little tree with a pair of tailorbird who have crafted a masterwork by stitching leaves to make a nest cup. They shout pretty loudly for their size. So the tree is under double occupancy. I hope they don’t start fighting like cantankerous humans in residential colonies.

I am determined on my mission born of emotions for the underdogs. If it results even in a bump on the lined back of the irritating tiktikking nuisance, whom I found cute earlier but now find a villain due to the addition to my knowledge, I hardly care. I have turned mean in following my basic instincts guiding my emotions for the beautiful birds. I know it will play truant many times. I am but ready for the job. I have a weapon also in mind to punish it with. In fact, I have taken out a flexible single strand of switch from my mother's bamboo broom. It's waiting for the culprit. Though it won't harm the squirrel critically, but I see it can definitely give her a painful back, if she messes with my birdie friends. All the best little couples. Let there be a successful episode in your love tale.

Things appear pretty normal with the usual humdrum till there is an itchy-tailed intruder on the scene. There is a literal blast of chirpy protests against this unsolicited visit. The bully, a male Indian Robin with rusty red rump and its itchy tail flicking, arrives on the tree. Probably it has not so fair intentions, otherwise why would the hosts raise such a storm of choicest abuses against the intruder. The tailorbird pair, half the size of the intruder, can fight—verbally of course—with more tenacity than even the most cantankerous aunty in your neighborhood. Their shrill notes have sharp talons man. What proficiency in quarreling!

Well, they have a right to do it. After all, they own this tree under the birdie constitution. They have their nest sewn up among three leaves. The tree belongs to them, of course. Even I, whose courtyard happens to keep rooting of the tree, have surrendered my rights of ownership after witnessing their vehement show of abusive lung power in protest against any effort to prune even those branches that are well away from their little nest and are of inconvenience to me. But then I can't match their quarrelsome capacity, so I have resigned myself to the fate of my face and head getting some brush against the irksome caressing of the branches. What to do? They own it completely as long as they have their family here.

The spotted munia couple also try to contribute to the protest, but the cute chocolate brown little beauties having chess pattern on their breast have such feeble jingling notes that you can't even make out their contribution to the noisy protest. It's like their sitar notes get lost in the humungous, buttock-busting notes of the biggest drums in the loudest discotheque in the maddest part of the world. Anyway, they also protest and flick from branch to branch. It pays to have quarrelsome neighbors sometimes. Isn't it? So the bully gets intimated. He flows away with a jarring note of typical chhhrrr accompanied by its ever-flicking tail.

These four residents of the small Parijat tree also throw expletives on the baddy squirrel who tries to get away with their eggs. However, she stands little chance as long as these noisy defenders are there. Agreed that they can't physically chase the fur-lined snoutish nuisance, but their verbal fight draws my attention sometimes and I go to add resources to the defending army. The very same age-old instinct to be with the underdogs! By the way, sometimes even a pair of purple sunbirds, the male's metallic blue sheen looking over the mundane dull colors of the female, joins the protests. A pair of oriental white eye, their notes hardly distinct among the commotion, also arrives on the scene. But they make bigger statements with their beautiful white-ringed eyes and flit with their square tails from branch to branch. Once in a while, even the most garrulous babblers also join the protesting chorus, thinking there must be a bigger common enemy to all, for example a snake. However, when they find that these tiny birds are overhyping the threat over almost a non-issue, they just take off angrily.

But man at least you expect a bit of reciprocation for your help. The other day, I am removing some wild growth in a corner away from the tree and there go these tailor birds again throwing choicest abuses in their birdie language. I even feel irritated. I have even surrendered my right to the tree and now you don't want me to touch anything in the whole yard, I whisper to myself. So now I am open to the idea that they have at least equal right over the courtyard also. What to do? These tiny, shrill loudspeakers can definitely send down jarring notes when they are angry!

In any case, it’s my gain. Once you learn to share these things with the natural claimants, life and living becomes easier. There will hardly be any big issues with a person who has learnt to let small birds and animals have their share of the environment around.

Read the Unwritten Stories

 

Sometimes reading the unwritten stories presented by mother earth can give more satisfaction than the tomes of tales we read in books.

There is a little story of an abandoned nest.

It is a little tale of refurbishing an old nest and the story of birdie care. Well, not all abandoned nests go unnoticed. While the rains lashed in August and September, a scaly-breasted munia pair (spice finch or nutmeg mannikin) set up an irregular, oval nest of grass and straw lined with feathers and strands of cotton wool. The cycle was completed and the hatchlings flew to take their chance on life on the tightrope of creation and destruction. The parents, however, are known to use the dormitory off and on while on the way in their birdie sorties. I see them a few times sneaking in for a restful night.

The nest stands jolted after more than a month since the nestlings left. The rains and wind shook it. But then the old house is still fit enough to catch the eyes of a pair of white-throated munia (Indian silverbill) who are a bit lazy and sociable little beauties open to move into the used house. They have white throat running from beak to undertail, brown plumage and blue grey beak. So letting swift chirrup trill, the lady on house hunting is seen inspecting the rain-lashed nest, evaluating how much of refurbishment might be required.

Quite incidentally, the original house-owner, scaly-breasted munia, also happens to be there on a nearby branch. Perhaps it has come for some noontime nap. The silent and peaceful bird with bright cinnamon head, full brown plumage and scaly patterns on breast just looks on pensively. Possibly it understands that laying eggs by someone is more important than her sleep. So guys, there is no fight. It just looks at the would-be-mother with a strange detachment and allows the inspection of her former house. Hope we humans can learn something from these birdie guys.

Don’t you feel that primarily love is ingrained in the photons of the cosmic energy pervading around?

Empathy, Solitude and Love

 

Feeling lonely? Solitude is somewhere in the same garden. With a lonely feeling you are depressed, which perilously borders on being destructive. Solitude, on the other hand, is creative. There is an art of changing your loneliness into solitude. You can even start with a peacock like I tell you.

Finding it difficult to empathize with fellow human beings due to many setbacks and disappointments? Well, don’t feel too low. Start with nature and its constituents who have been pushed to the corner due to our onslaught. Empathy is the mother of compassionate self. Nurture her well, and she will deliver a healthy, kind and considerate baby. As a gift you hardly get brooding moments to feel lonely.

Instead of just killing time, and as a result kill my own prospects to being better, I willingly sympathize with the evening guest, even though he won't have tea. I accept my share of the collective sins against Mother Nature. This very acknowledgment lays the first brick of the building of redemption. The biggest of trees sprout from the smallest of seeds. Similarly, mightiest salvations, and resultant boons, rewards and achievements, begin from tiny sensitivities. Sounds miraculous? Well, not to me, because I understand that they make up the persona over all. With the warmth of empathy, my solitude turns full of love.

I see groups of peacocks and peahens on rooftops and terraces foraging for survival in the concrete jungle. Farmlands cover almost all the countryside now. And there are hardly any reptiles and insects to feed upon. Landholding is decreasing. Population is increasing. Agriculture is becoming unviable. More and more chemicals are used to increase production. Commerce sees only the outstanding stats of production and profit-loss equation in financial terms. It overlooks the shadows under the shiny lamp where ecological destruction is writing newer and newer tragic tales. Chemicals give diseases to humans in the medium turn, but they kill reptiles and insects straightway. So where will the peacocks go? They take refuge in the concrete jungle. Ironically, almost every species now stands at the mercy of we human beings.

Well, the winter is slowly building up and the sunrays are losing their pinch. And the moment they lose their hot potency, your skin pines for a warm kiss. Welcome early winters! I have been writing for my blog almost through the day. Then feeling tired I decide to move around to take a tea break in the evening. And here comes the guy, the bald Romeo who has shed his plumage hence bothered more about food than peahens. No spare chapati, his favorite, this evening. So I offer biscuits. He takes a few unwelcoming bites. I try wheat grains. Lo, here he is savoring his evening snack. But I feel sad that he cannot have tea and be my tea party partner.

He has learnt the lesson: to survive you are at the mercy of humans. With his natural feeding ground, the countryside, turning into a chemical bowl of monoculture where poison kills insects, rodents and reptiles immediately in the fields—and humans also, slowly over a period of time as the toxicants enter the food chain and punish we humans for our collective sins—this beautiful multicolored wonder of mother nature enters houses, beating its natural fear of the two-footed most dangerous animal on the planet, and stands there like a well decorated beggar. What else to do? No option left.

The struggling farmers pour chemicals, pesticides and weedicides in the fields. Nothing is thus left for this free forager in the open countryside. So it lands on terraces and yards to get survival morsels. Sometimes when its hunger is unbeatable, it follows people well into their rooms, like a cute kid hankering after elders for chocolate. The last time it came, it had a huge bunch of shining and shimmering plumage, just on the verge of shedding it away. I could hear my mother requesting, "Arre pagal pankh hamare ghar gira ke Jaana!"

However, in this he is the master of his own will. So here comes the colorful Romeo without his burden. He has shed his plumage and looks like a nimble, flirtatious teenager. Moves freely, flies with lesser effort. But it comes at the cost of love. Peahens won't give him a damn look without his decoration. And of course my mother is angry that he didn't shed even a single feather in our yard. "Go to them whom you gave your feathers!" The poor thing gets reprimanded. She starts with her household chores, but not before handing over a chapatti (so it was there after all; or mothers have better eyes than sons in these regards) to me to honor the colorful guest.

With a sad smile on my face, I look at the guest eating the chapatti pieces. Possibly we have already done irreversible damage to the ecosystem. But then there is always hope as long as one sees such colorful wonder of Mother Nature. I decide to be happy and hopeful as it completes it belated lunch. Stretches and shakes its shortened plumage as a mark of contentment and majestically moves to the far end of the yard where it can spot a bucket of water. It always takes water after the meals, by the way. Cornered in a tiny eco-space, it may well be the last in its lineage, but then the sight is so beautiful that all the doomsday scenarios get dispelled. I smile with a contended feeling as it hops onto the wall and goes away.   

So brother and sisters, life is lying around in countless forms for us to provide a bit of meaning to our own self. It has unlimited potential to give love; has limits for our greed though. Go, pick up the small wares and build the palace of your happiness.

My Mom is still there to help us!

 

Ma is still around and taking care of us even though she left her body almost two and half years ago. The other day, one of my aunties in our extended family lost her gold earring. Now it’s a catastrophe for a woman to lose her gold ornament. Apart from the economic loss, they take it as a bad omen also. Give her two for her lost gold piece, she but will still be sad and sullen about the lost one. My aunt is a very hardworking woman. She has a set-up routine of household chores like my mother had. Aunty gets up early and her day involves morning walk in the fields around the village, visit to the temple, many rounds around the cattle barn at a distance from the house and the rest of the routine tasks in their sprawling countryside house. Given her large area of movement over the dusty village streets, even to think of pinpointing some specific location where the probability of finding the earring was higher than others seemed a futile exercise. She and the family looked into all nook corners of the house. The temple premises were scanned and so were the streets and paths where she had walked on that day. Much disturbed auntie tried to sleep at night but sleep was nowhere nearby. She was in tension. Around half past three in the morning, she got a short span of sleep and my mother appeared in her dream. Auntie says my mother was seen brooming the streets on the side of the house and the little square falling on the other side of our house. Mother always cleaned the surroundings after cleaning the house. Young women less than half her age won’t even think of cleaning the neighbourhood streets for others to walk. But that’s how mother was. She lived a life that wasn’t strictly chained by mine or your boundaries. Cleaning the street in front of the house, mother said to auntie, ‘Don’t take so much of tension. Now go to sleep peacefully. You will find your gold earring. It’s lying near the platform fronting the street in front of our house. There is a splinter of bamboo near it.’ Well, around eight in the morning auntie recalled the dream and went out to the said place. The earring was found exactly at the place mother had indicated. Just imagine dozens of people had been passing the spot and nobody spotted it. But nothing can miss a mother’s eyes. She is still around, keeping a watch over the proceedings of our follies from a higher dimension.  

The Path Leading to Silence and Solitude

 

Some sweetly humid moments on a rainy day in the countryside can provide more solace than biggest joyrides in concrete jungles. Nature’s bounties guys. Accept the offer. Like I do. It enriches you with observation, understanding, realization and glimpses of the ultimate truth.

There is a mystical silence behind all this little drama. The pathway to that zone of silence is through this amazing thoroughfare. Take your journey through it. You will reach the point of your solitude. There you will see your true self, the real loving self. I for one never miss a chance to allow the sonorous cooing touch the strings of my soul and feel the mystical harmony sizzling through my heart.

Life is never greener and more colorful in my small yard than during the monsoons: luxurious green of harsingar, motia, jasmine, duranta, guava, kari patta, tulsi, murva and the ubiquitous sadabahar blooming out of proportion. Well, the rains have been good. Butterflies dart around, flirting with flowers and their mates amid airy swirls. Even the irritatingly prickly and boring keekars are luxurious green like a new bride.

There are more birds breeding in the safe and overgrown greenery. I can even see a kite hovering in silent, serene majesty, its wings spread out in embracing comfort of Mother Nature. Even in the countryside the sight has become a rarity and I cannot remember many during the past decade. So it's a positive sign for the birdie world.

There are two pairs of oriental magpie robins chhrrring around. A treepie gives its strangely sweet ululation. A pair of Asian pied starling muses from the electricity line. A white wagtail flicks its tail and gives a sharp preening shriek of ecstasy as it picks up some insect from the ground. A group of bee-eaters dart and free-dive after the flies going footloose in the open skies. A bee-eater sits silently and swoops suddenly to catch a dragonfly. It then sits on a dry mulberry branch, the prey bigger for its beak, thinking over what to do now. It then starts beating the struggling pray on the branch, striking its beak on both sides by rhythmically moving its neck sideways. It appears more like bird yoga.

The bulbul family is still around, improvising newer and newer calls. The mother bulbul is very possessive of its offspring and entails it all the time. The wire-tailed swallow family is often seen with their swift dives and faint chipping sounds. There are lots of flying insects. So the young fellows are being fed well. Tiny tailor-bird tweets with the best effect among all. A lovelorn male Indian Robin is persistently sending love notes to attract a mate. The other day, it was drizzling and the lonely bird kept sitting on a high dry branch in the rain and continued with its pining notes. Well, let's hope lady luck smiles on it soon.

The unperturbed stoicism of the dove pair is inspiring to a meditator like me. The babblers and crows are noisy though. The stern looking mynah always appears with an air of aloof, single point focus on her own affairs. Another pair of spotted munia has set up a new nest in the Parijat tree's upper branches.

So the slow pace of life unfolds in its rustic majesty in the countryside. Then to top it all, there are the love notes of the lonely oriental magpie robin. Beautiful symphony of monsoonal love notes. The long drawn love notes are flying in air to catch the attention of an interested female. The guy is so absorbed in his love search that I reach just 3 feet from it. Only then it realizes that there are more important things than love and irritatingly flows away to continue its mate-searching song from a nearby tree.

Each moment is precious. Each instant is full of endless possibilities. Come on, try to observe all that is happening in such little moments. You will soon realize the richness of time. You will learn the art of getting the maximum of each single moment without feeling hurried and burdened with the daunting task. A natural effortlessness will seep into your way of doing things. But for all this to happen, you have to open your arms to the little wonders of life. These are the atoms that constitute the bigger dreams around.