A baby Bulbul

A baby bulbul comes and flutters around on the ledge of my balcony. I have got so used to it that I wait for it every day. Initially, it is accompanied by the mother bird who feeds him the scraps and bird food I leave for them and a host of other birds. Whirring its wings, going’ chee chee ‘without a break while mother drops food into the open beak, it looks dependant and somehow helpless. It has now grown a bit and comes on its own. It picks up food on its own, takes a dive to the water bowl and flies off. One day, it shoots off having been chased by a pigeon and hurtles onto the window pane with a thud. Without losing momentum it flies off to the tree almost like a swimmer doubles back on finishing the length.

The day I have enough time I remember my pet bulbul from decades ago. Having been told that they make obedient pets, I guess it was procured from the mela that takes place on Rathyatra. Stoically, my mother takes care of it as she des of the fish and the rabbit which runs around the small flat. On occasion we take the bulbul out of its cage, shut all windows and doors and let it roam around. It follows us all over the house like a dog, a strange sight no doubt. I am very attached to my bulbul. When I come back home from school, it flaps its wings in greeting. I wait for the ice cream cart to come around to pick up my daily dose of an orange bar. I don’t have to hail the seller; he draws up at the huge bay window of the ground floor flat and hands me my ice cream through the grill while I pay him somewhere around thirty paise I think. And then I sit and slurp next to my bulbul while it carries on some kind of silent conversation with me.

One day I come home to find my mother agitated. She draws me to the bulbul’s cage where it seems to half sit and half lie against one side. It is trying to flutter its wings and an inarticulate ‘chee’ comes out of its throat. “The cat came an hour ago,” says my mother.” It pounced at the cage, that’s all , and since then the poor thing has been struggling to overcome something.” I have no idea how well it had bonded with me, for the instant I go to the cage, it steps up its fluttering, and its desperately feeble cries. I say something comforting; it flaps some more, looks at me and sinks down gracefully, dead. “It got scared,” said my mother,” too scared.” “It was only waiting for you to come.”This is the first time death touches my life and I can find no answer to my ‘whys. I turn the ice cream seller away, engulfed in nothingness.

Perhaps my distaste for cats stems from this. I love every animal under the sun, except cats. As I look at this baby bulbul on my balcony I make fanciful assumptions woven out of imaginary yearnings that my bulbul has come back to me. I am carried back in time as I visualise the room in which it stayed, the cage, my mother’s sad face for the bulbul and for me. I crave the taste of the cold orange bar and the pulp pieces in it, licking it as it was an art how not to spill a single drop with the accidental loose chunk sometimes scooped into my hand. I could never bear to lose any of it – drop or chunk.

Nostalgia can never be a single isolated incident. It encompasses the during , before and after and opens the floodgates. Its reach is far beyond. Along with the sorrow for my bulbul the mind roams the excitement of going to the mela that young, and to the even afterwards. It recalls the joy of pottering around among the cages, from among which my rabbit had been spotted too on a different occasion, an extremely indignant rabbit who would pick up his aluminium food container and hurl it out of the cage if he found it empty of the customary soaked black channa. Or the munia birds I picked up more than once whose bird song I can replicate in lyrics if not in tune! With their cloth cover lifted off as morning dawned, they would look slightly dazed and then with an almost determined toss of their heads, launch into their song one after the other, in a kind of practised chorus. They made the mornings worthwhile. Where are they now? Where are those times when all seemed right with the world and there was no tomorrow? Where are those people who in all innocence were expected to be there always, laughing with me, laughing with me?

I cannot tear my thoughts away as one after another the memories launch themselves in my mind, taking me on a time travel. Back and forth I tread, frozen in time. I have to fight a battle to draw myself back to the real world. When I do, I see that the baby bulbul was long gone, taking with it the early morning freshness. The sun is shining bright, peeping at me through the luxurious tree branches in which baby bulbul and family live, sometimes father, mother and baby all on my balcony. The sun’s warmth and brilliance seems to say that it is a new day, a day of promise and much to do. My little bulbul.....