I miss my Sparrows

It wasn’t until when we read ‘The portrait of a lady’ by ace writer and novelist Khushwant Singh that I started observing birds and their unique charm. The portrait of a lady about Khushwant Singh’s grandmother feeding birds, catching their emotions, symbolizing happiness and grief, moaning on her death and not eating the grains is all what changed my perception about birds.

Somewhat similar to what Singh has portrayed in his story, there was a courtyard in my house with a Jamun tree placed in the centre. Every day I would be compelled to get up early in the morning because of the chirping of sparrows that used to set in on the slab right down the tree to eat whatever little grains or rice my grandmother used to lay down for them. The copper vessel containing water for them never took more than five minutes to fall down the slab when the quest to quench their thirst, started agitating the birds.

They would dirty the several times during the day and my grandmother tirelessly pumped buckets of water to sweep the. It was only then when I  left for higher studies, to move to a new town. It was then that I realized that I would miss my sparrows, the only pets I had.

Un-caged and free yet my pals and pets  would wake me up before my mother would. The only person left behind in the house was my grandmother.  I always used to enquire about how were the birds whenever we conversed on telephone or every letter I wrote to granny had a paragraph full of queries and suggestions for the sparrows. I still remember how annoyed I used to get each morning and tell my grandma while I brushed my teeth that she will not feed them from the next day because they disturbed my sleep. I used to rush out of the bed and run towards them to make them fly away in one go. They would rather tease me by coming back the very next minute.

There came a time when I actually used to feed them in their mouth talking to them, scolding them not to rest in  the Jamun tree at night for the cat would feed on them. Once a cat had badly hurt a little sparrow one night, and I remember insisting on fetching the bird to give her first aid. But sadly the next day we found her lying dead in the courtyard.

Once during a stormy night, the old Jamun fell off, after which my father got it uprooted completely. Its leaves were always full of beet due to the birds and we never plucked away a full uneaten jamun form the tree. My grandmother never again had to toil hard to clean the courtyard. It’s like; we had snatched their habitat, their home from them. Not a single bird could wake me up anymore. For  many days the slab was left with rice and grains. The copper vessel was still full of water with algae.

Today whenever we go over to our house, I still look up in the sky, no jamun tree to obstruct the vision, sunshine washing the courtyard, to look where have the sparrows gone and left me. I still hope while I look up that one fine morning I’ll get up by hearing the ‘Chirp! Chirp! Chirp!’ of my sparrows. Loving your pets is so very essential. Isn’t it?

Shefali Saxena

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