Sparrows no longer turn up! I wonder why! Much as I keep calling them out over and over!
Undoubtedly, we’ve vexed them badly. You know what, they won’t get annoyed without a reason. They in fact keep tweeting, chirruping, singing and fluttering around, reminding us of our innocent daughters! We with all our arrogance shoo them away.
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As a consequence, these innocent birds are hardly visible these days!! Ears keenly long to hear their chirping and fluttering.
These sinless birds have left us, flown a long long way to reach remote and faraway lands. O, mother! What fate have you written for these poor birds? Hard to imagine they aren’t going to visit us anymore. Truly the “Angry Birds”!
We may try calling them out; they don’t seem to be in a mood to get back. One of the prominent reasons being these days we hardly have clerestories in our large and luxurious mansions to light up the surroundings and giving them a little corner to nest in!
Perhaps we have made up our minds to get lost in our self-created darkness.
“We are thus compelled to look for a foreign land. No point crafting nests in our very own motherland, given the circumstances”, admits a little sparrow.
“Humanity has pretty much collapsed”, alleges the little one, “How do we get rid of this clutter? In the end, mankind is going to be dumbfounded.”
With the onset of CoVid-19, some colorful birds have started perching on small and big plants in my beautiful lawn. They have started singing and fluttering their wings. The whole family is happy to see blue, black, and green sparrows across the courtyard! I never saw such multicolored sparrows during my childhood.
I don't see any black-billed male sparrow these days locking beaks with female sparrows, I saw as a child! “Where are they? Have they left their mates behind to perish?”, I wonder.
Potters are baking clay and selling utensils right in front of their houses ????. No one among them requires to sit all day long outside just to protect these earthen implements.
Whenever a customer visits, an old man of the house would come out to sell the appliances. One day my mother asked me to bring a small earthen bowl to set yogurt. On my visit, I saw a few manmade nests hanging outside the potters’ house. “Are they meant to deceive the innocent birds ?”, I pondered.
I wondered if I hanged these nests from lush green trees in my courtyard, will the birds join there to play with me, warbling, chirruping, and singing.
Even as I hanged these nests with great enthusiasm, not even a single bird paid a visit. I used a blade to open their mouths, as they felt narrow with time.
Each evening I come home, the first thing I ask is if any bird visited the nests!! No answer, as if the whole family has become dumb!
No bird turned up; called out over and over though!
One day my mother comments- "O my son!! You hang a million nests, these birds won’t arrive until they build their own roosts.”
Mother's words were so apt.
Mouths of the manmade nests are still vide open longing for the arrival of the colourful sparrows ????. Not even a single bird seems ready to turn up. As the nests feel lonely and sad, so do I
(10 June, 2020)
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Ninder Ghugianvi, writer and columnist
ninder_ghugianvi@yahoo.com
Phone No. : 9417421700
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