Mr and Mrs Bird

Mr. and Mrs. Bird

(For the want of any names, lets just keep it simple silly)

Mr. B kept on shouting hurry up, we need to be back before dark .You don’t know how difficult it is to make one’s way back in the airway as it gets so dark and the for and the twilight witching hour mixed with the commotion of the lights which confuse us heading back home to themulti-storeyes green patch in the urban jungle.

I wonder, as always how do they know where to go and sleep. Is it a homing device, they all come fitted in? I watch them during my walk they are like poetry in motion, a flight of coming home to roost. The chirp, the caw the tweet of the birds all comes together as melody to my ears, but for one Mr. and Mrs. B who always come in late. They circle, swoop the skies as if they are the monitors of the whole flock, waiting, counting the numbers making sure all of them are in there. Mr. B looks at me as if I am the crazy intruder living un-glamorously in a cemented house with no air to breathe in. Its pity I see in his eyes, and sometimes a smile, as if he understands.

Mrs. B always sits on the railing of the first floor looking, waiting for the stray last bird to come in and take place. She makes the final flight before joining her husband for the last sip from the feeder. I think she might be like me, one who needs constant water. I tell you, my constant fear is finding myself without water. It is like fanaa for the soul.

Mr and Mrs B conveniently allow us to live with them, condescending us to live them to imbibe the happiness, the mindless chatter and the constant tweeting.  I wish humans would learn form them , no wars over a strip of land, no discrimination over caste creed, no senseless killing over sex and yes equal opportunity to study unlike the country next door.

Mr. and Mrs. B and generations before can teach us so much more; even more than the world famous limiting 140 word tweet !

I want to intrude into their heaven, to understand the gabble, the hierarchy games played, where why do some birds go first and some go last. I wish I’d know the secret of how they all just get silent t, pin drop, it’s as if someone takes a feather and lights out. Our garden a haven of these millions of birds is not a figment of my imagination, but an oasis, a rarity in this fast vanishing jungle. All I would like is to have is a conversation with these avian friends of mine, Chand sifarsh maybe. The one eyed crow, the bird with a twisted foot, the brown bird with one wing and the white owl who decides when he wants to grace us with his presence.

The Aunt Lucy (common pheasant) who roams the gardens as if she owns ‘em with her trio behind her. I think she has a hen-pecked husband who follows her lost in love and her magic. Was that an oxymoron, I don’t know? All I wish is a window into their chatter where they discuss the world at large, the village in general and they dying rays of the sun painting the world red and the strange two legged person who stops, stares and walks with two twigs in her ears.