Rajeev Khanna, Solan
She has been a daily visitor to my house for the last three months. An uninvited visitor who just barges in uninvited—throws a tantrum—before she is shown the door. But come to think of it, I have fallen in love with her and every morning I await her arrival. This little sparrow has touched a childish chord in me and I feel scared that I will lose her one day.
It remains a big mystery what drives her inside the house. I know she enters from a small window in the bathroom that remains slightly open for cross ventilation. She shamelessly eases herself on the window sill before entering the rooms and then the ruckus begins. She flies all over the place twittering. I am worried about her hitting a tube light or some sharp edge. Yes, she has got herself entangled in the curtains on a couple of occasions, has been rattled and then resumed her flight. It is at this point that I have to leave whatever I am doing to open the doors of the house to allow her to make the daily royal exit. I keep on wondering why she does not confine herself to the daily dose of bajra that is kept outside in the gallery for the birds. What is it that enthuses her to invade the interiors of my house? And why she is desperate to leave once she is inside? The questions remain unanswered but she remains a daily delight.
I am no wildlife enthusiast or an environment activist. I have just loved nature and have romanced sparrows. I am often compelled to recall my association with them over the years. I still remember my childhood when hordes of them would descend on the tin roof of the house in a colony were we lived. They would create a ruckus if they did not find their daily quote of grains on the roof. One could hear the loud chatter and the small jumps on the roof and was compelled to think whether their quote had been delivered or not.
Then of course they were in the habit of making their nests in the false ceiling of our dining room. We could hear the movements in their nest even at night ad it was like having sublet our accommodation to them for raising a family. How I wish we humans can have this system of accommodating the homeless in times of despair.
I also remember the glee with which they came to eat their grains once the snow had melted from the tin roofs. The way they relished and then splattered the extra quota put for them on these days made me easily understand the law of diminishing marginal utility as a student of economics.
Still later while posted in Nainital, I continued the habit of befriending these tiny birds by offering them bajra on daily basis. I used to put handful of the grain on a small cement slab outside my house and they would come rushing… can’t explain how I felt at that moment… it was above every luxury. But at the same time this daily routine was often broken because of my outstation assignments.
And this is where I realized their emotive prowess. On days that I had to leave station for a few days; I never forgot to put heaps of bajra at the designated place so that they may not go hungry for the next few days. I never knew what happened to those heaps but witnessed a strange phenomenon on the morning after my return. They would come, look at the grain that I had just kept for them, twitter but not eat. It was their way of complaining! This defiance continued till the time I stood about. But the moment I left and came back after a few minutes, not a speck of grain was to be seen there. They had eaten it all and from the next day the daily friendly routine resumed.
Having left the town, I often remembered my twittering friends. I was touched very much when my landlord told me on a recent visit that they did come looking for me for some days after I left.
As a reporter I have grown used to my stories being killed on one pretext or the other. But I was really agitated on one occasion at the response of one of the top functionaries of a Mumbai based daily where I worked for about just ten days. He not only refused to carry a story on our parliamentarians raising the issue of vanishing sparrows in the cities during the ongoing session but also belittled the idea. Above all, they are still to make me the payment for my ten-day labour.
Now, with this tiny visitor making her daily visits, the affair with the sparrows has resumed once again.
(Rajeev Khanna is a veteran journalist with over thirty years of experience across print, broadcast and digital media. He has worked with leading media organisations, including BBC, Asian Age, Indian Express, Times of India and Tribune, and has contributed to digital platforms such as The Citizen, The Wire, Scroll, National Herald and Down To Earth. An avid reader since his student days in Solan and Shimla, he maintains a deep interest in literature and occasionally ventures into fiction writing. His other passions include cinema, music, travel and sports, reflecting his wide-ranging intellectual and cultural interests.)
Nurturing Creativity – Keekli Charitable Trust, Shimla
