My love for birds

Had imagination been the sky, then what would have your mind done to reach those fruits of forbidden desires? Of course, it would have flown like birds, and nibbled on those sweet fruits. Not only my mind flies like a bird, but also I had quite a few pet birds in my childhood. Some people may sniff at me for calling hen a bird. Well, they may be used as a poultry product, or they may not fly much, and their appearance may not be elegant, but they are definitely birds. I proudly announce that my first pets were hens, and I didn't eat them.


When I was around 6 years old, we kept 3 hens for supply of eggs. Throughout the day, they roamed in the backyard of our huge SDO bungalow, and before sunset, they themselves returned home. We kept them in a 3×3 wooden cubicle covered with lattice. They laid eggs there, and we locked the structure in evening. The three hens had three different colours. The biggest one was a white leghorn, while the other two were of local variety, one black and the other red. The leghorn was a prolific egg-layer, but the small black hen provided us the most tasteful eggs. Only on one occasion, we let the leghorn hatch her chicks. Generally, we utilized  the eggs for making omelettes.

My morning school ended at 10-30 AM. I didn't have many friends, and I used to spend a lot of time watching those hens. The gigantic SDO building, which was built by the British, had a huge compound which included servant quarters. Our watchman was a Nepali, and like every other Nepali his name was Bahadur. He lived in his small quarter with his large family. He, too, domesticated a flock of hens, and among them was a big, bad, red cock. You must have heard that in animal kingdom, the winner takes all. He was the winner by default,  because he was the only adult male in the flock. He took great pleasure in fecundating the entire female folk. No wonder, my 3 hens were not spared. But, as I said I was very young, I thought he was beating my hens when he was busy in the act. Unknowingly, I disturbed him, and shooed him away so many times. The love God for hens must have been very angry with me, I suspect.

During the same period, we were surrounded by a large number of pigeons. They were very fond of my father. They loved to eat biscuits from his hand. I was not enamoured with them, though, because of their habit of making their habitat extremely dirty.  Around 6 pigeons lived in a forlorn place on the stairs towards the roof. Since no body went there, it was a safe place. But occasionally, I went there out of curiosity to found the place full of poop.

My final tryst with birds came when I found Mithu. Mithu became my favourite parrot. He was long, had eye-soothing green feathers and beautiful red beak (he bit my fingers on few occasions in his early days). Red chilli was his favourite food. He could talk. I taught him several small sentences like, " Mithu bhat khabe". One well-wisher gifted him when he was just 1 month old. When he didn't learn the art of flying, he walked freely in our rooms.

He didn't die, but he left me when he became young. I became morose for almost a week. Before that final breakup, he had escaped the cage on three occasions, and had flown away. But his range had been within the vicinity of my neighbourhood. On each occasion, I could spot him, and had approached him with the cage in my hand. I had yelled at him, "Mithu come on, please enter the cage." Like an obedient boy, he obliged. Happily, we came back home.

But on that fateful day, he intermingled with a flock of parrots. Finding so many compatriots -- maybe he got his fiancee too in the flock -- he didn't look back, and left me for ever. But, after the incident, every time I saw a flock of parrots, I ran like a crazy boy, and cried his name in the hope that he would once again come back. But, that didn't happen.

After a long period, from 2004 to 2006, I had developed a love-hate kind of relationship with a pair of Indian mynah. Most of the time, it was love. The male bird was the bolder of the two. He did not hesitate to come near me to pick up the crumbs of biscuits that I offered. I had affectionately christened him Adi. I tried to learn his language. After getting acquainted with his simple language, I communicated with him in his language. For example, "P Q, P Q" in his language meant "Hello, Hello". When I mimicked him in his style, he always responded. When he became angry or tried to frighten his enemies, he would sound, "Keeeee, Keeeeee".

You might be astonished to know that he didn't like me sleeping late in the morning. If I woke at 6AM, he would be happy. He would spare me up to 7 AM. But, if I failed to wake up by that time, he would continuously call me till I responded. During noon time in holidays, he would sing songs for me. Those were very pleasing moments in my life.

Hate relationship came during their mating seasons. At that time, their first priority was to find a secured nest. They thought that the open cavity on the upper portion of the wall in my toilet, which was meant for placing an exhaust fan, was a good place to build their sweet home. Initially, I didn't object, as I loved them. But as they began to build their nest, a lot of waste materials such as dried twigs and leaves, broken comb, polythene bags etc used to fall in my toilet making it dirty. My mother strongly objected to it, and tried to shoo them away. But I prevented her, and tried to solve the problem by pasting a cardboard on the wall. Unfortunately, that didn't solve the problem, as they tried to push materials in order to expand the nest. So, I had to destroy the nest. I felt very sad, but I had no other options.

Pictures taken from the internet