I'm not an animal lover. I mean, I understand their importance in our ecosystem, I'm their well-wisher and like to hear their stories etc but I'd chicken out if a puppy comes to me with the friendliest of intentions. Wild animals are my favourites because they stay in the wild. The only exception was cows and calves which were all around me in childhood - our old house and both my grandparents' houses(there were dogs too but somehow we never developed any feelings for each other). Grazing the cows and getting the calves out of trouble were our chief business in the holidays and Manjanna and I even had a couple of favourite cows. The first thing we did after waking up was to go greet them, massage them and once we had even invited them inside the house to eat the fodder and got scolded. But then these beautiful and responsive desi creatures died, we couldn't connect with their offsprings that well, our frequency of visits to the native reduced and before I knew I had started regarding the massive and unemotional jersey cows manning the Bangalore streets with distaste.
Same story with birds as well. The wild birds that I saw in my childhood were well-respected and crows were a necessity because our forefathers had to be happy in heaven. It was only after coming to live in Bangalore apartment that I realized the menace of pigeons. They are plenty in our area, may be because there are thoughtless and kind people who throw grains at them every morning through their barred balconies and these birds mistake it for general kindness and come to every balcony. But I've always had the happy support of my husband in this matter so we'd kind of settled into the routine of pigeons-sit-in-balcony-humans-shoo-them-away quite well. Till the year 2010.
It was the time 5 year-old Rishi's love for all living things, including mosquitoes, was at its peak and it was also the year my mother-in-law stayed with us for six months. One fine day Rishi, aided by his equally loving grandmother, announced that they were feeding the pigeons. May be he was still a terror to me then or I was a little weak because I was pregnant or as my husband says, "humari mati mari gayi thi", we didn't push much with our opposition. Soon we had happy birds all over our balcony and soon after, there were two pigeon eggs in a flower pot. My first horrified reaction was to get my maid to move them away but my mother-in-law said it was not right to do that; anyway once the eggs hatched the birds would find their way out. I grumbled but she was firm that was a sin. What else, of course the eggs hatched, hatchlings made a lot of noise and messed up the whole place so much that I stopped stepping into the balcony, just waiting for that day when these things would get wings and fly away. That took an awfully long time but before that tragedy struck; it was rainy season and I don't know what happened, the young birds died one after the other. Rishi was inconsolable for days and my mother-in-law was silent as if she committed a crime. It took us quite a bit of effort to bring our balcony to some shape and I've been once-bitten-twice-shy ever since.
But this whole long thing I had to recount just to tell you that a pigeon has laid eggs again! These birds are either very dumb who don't understand hostile gestures or there is lack of communication of danger among the community. Anyway, I was all set to move the eggs away but Razia, our maid, begged us to let them be so that she could take the hatchlings. Before I could say anything she said she was going to raise them and not eat because her son has been yearning for them. I have a feeling that it's going to be a mess again.
