Monday, April 14, 2014

A pigeon in the hole


picture credit: http://indianinstincts.blogspot.in/

“L

OOK!” COMES STELLA’S EXCITED VOICE from the living room. “There’s a pigeon in here!”
     “Um,” I say, engrossed in my work.
     “She’s not afraid of me. Do come and look.”

     Reluctantly I leave my desk to witness the great scene. The pigeon is sitting in the showcase, cooing to itself. And Stella’s pretty face is all aglow.
     My irritation vanishes as I recall how much little things used to matter to me when I first came to Delhi from Kerala, years ago. I was a sharing a friend’s flat near India Gate then. His rear balcony was a traditional nesting place for pigeons. My favorite pigeon was one who let me stroke her as she sat nursing her chicks behind a broken chair. All was well until the day my friend went on a cleaning spree. He scooped up the chicks into a dust pan and threw them out. I saw them flapping their stumps of wings before spattering on the ground eight floors below. I felt he had thrown me down.
     Then there were squirrels. In Lodi Garden I used to sit with bated breath as they climbed on my hand and nibbled peanuts from my hand. I was once even bitten by a rather nervous squirrel who seemed not to know where the peanut ended and my hand began.
     The bugs here too behaved differently. Unlike their high flying energetic cousins in Kerala, cockroaches in Delhi just sat and stared when you went after them with a slipper. Among the other novelties were monkeys in government offices, peacocks that wandered about people’s backyards oblivious of their status as national birds, vultures who punctually queued atop buildings every morning to catch their “air buses” that carried them three thousand meters up in the sky – and exotic birds that came flying all the way from Siberia for nesting in the city zoo of all places.
       For each new observation I formed a theory. As I theorized more and more I observed less and less. Finally even what little I noticed stopped affecting me. Some time ago I saw a pigeon trying to build her nest in a traffic light. There was no space, and the twigs kept falling down. In the evening she was still at it, picking up the fallen twigs and putting them back again mechanically. I was unmoved except for a fleeting thought that the pressure of city life might have caused the poor pigeon go cuckoo.
*
NOW HERE IS STELLA, fresh from Kerala, ecstatic at the little marvels of a new place. Feeling odd I beckon her to the kitchen and carefully open the window which I was postponing cleaning out of sheer laziness. A family of sparrows is nesting on the sill. The mother bird flutters out, uttering sharp warning chirps. That brings her dark headed mate to the scene. Both the birds perch nearby and stare, dumb with anxiety.
     The two chicks inside seem freshly hatched. As we sign a torch into the nest, the chicks eagerly gape their huge pink beaks, begging for food. “Put some food into their mouths,” I suggest. Maternal instinct prompts Stella to say firmly, “No, let’s leave feeding to the mother bird.”
     Stella fills a little bowl with crushed rice and lentils and places it on the sill. Next to it she another filled with water. (Unlike in Kerala, here there is no danger of an invasion by ants on the rice and lentils, and by extension, on the chicks.) Then she hurries downstairs with a fork to dig up some worms. I wonder if she will ever find one in this sun baked earth. 
*
     I am sure of one thing: I will not clear that window until those fledglings grow and fly away.
    
    

No comments:

Post a Comment