When I moved to Mumbai from Lucknow I knew that most of all, I’d miss the birds. So, on that last morning, I woke early, made myself a cup of tea and took it out into the garden. I was all alone. The garden was like a dark cave. It was too cold for the birds to show themselves yet, but I knew they were there, watching me from the comfort of their nests. When I looked back at the house I knew I would not miss it, or the people that lived in it: parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, decrepit and smelly dogs and nosy servants.
So I said goodbye. To the faithful Hornbills, the worried looking green barbet, the red vented bulbuls, the glossy koyals, the peacocks and mynas. Goodbye bald headed vultures, goodbye golden backed woodpecker—I’m off to the big city.
As a child I would dream of becoming a bird. Not because they could fly and I couldn’t. But because of their colours. Who ever thought of putting grey with copper, black with orange. Purple with green and russet. When I tried to wear the same combinations in my clothes they never looked quite right. Even as an adult, every time I saw a new species of bird, I felt the same mix of awe and envy.
When I arrived in Mumbai, I stayed in the empty apartment of a family friend in Colaba. Pigeons shat on the pavement from the trees on my street. I would watch them as I drank my tea in the morning and wonder disdainfully if they were the only kinds of birds to be found in Mumbai. After a few days not speaking to anyone, I realized that the pigeons weren’t so boring after all. Their sensible grey overcoats were actually liberally splashed with a dull mother of pearl purple with shiny copper overtones and an iridescent grey-green. Meanwhile, I was forced to go further and further north in my search for a reasonable rent. Each day I took the train through miles of evil smelling concrete with hardly a tree to be seen anywhere. What trees I saw looked foreign, like refugees or illegal immigrants, timidly hiding between the buildings. And then there was the smell of the city. Sewage and sea. It was everywhere—and only served to compound my loneliness.
In the end I decided upon Bandra, a once beautiful northern suburb. Like everywhere in Mumbai, Bandra had lots of buildings. Built over the carcasses of old red tiled houses, these newly built apartment blocks poked their scrawny necks out of a sea of emerald rainforest. Trees were to buildings what birds were to me. The latter looked fat, blockish and unimaginative, lacking the architectural grace and complication of even the most ordinary tree. But Mumbai seemed to like these contrasts.
The apartment I moved into was on the fourth floor. But since it was built into the side of a hill, I was lucky enough to be able to see trees on the left hand corner. Directly in front stood the ugly peeling façade of another building whose tinted windows looked like a blind man’s glasses. One flat in particular, the one a floor higher than mine, attracted my attention because it was so expensively furnished. The windows of the flat were the only ones that weren’t tinted and the inside of the flat looked very modern and minimalist, like something you might see in the pages of an interior design magazine. Only the bedroom remained hidden, muffled in heavy silk curtains.
My apartment in contrast was nothing more than a single large room divided in the middle. One side was bedroom and the other living room. There was no balcony but giant windows made up one entire wall. Because my work was done on the computer, the window quickly became my most important contact with the world.
Easily the most impressive tree in the compound was a venerable old banyan, almost five storeys high, and at least two hundred years old I guessed. My window looked directly into its biggest branches, and if I leaned over a little I could look down to where the tree began just above the far left corner wall of my building’s compound. Someone had built a shrine at the base of the tree and red and yellow thread was wrapped around the trunk. But what really interested me was not what humans had done to the tree but what the birds had done to it. For the tree was like an apartment building. At each level, it was inhabited by a different species of bird. On the top were the birds of prey—hawks and falcons mostly, though sometimes an eagle would arrive for a short while, frightening the others away. Right beside them, tolerated and ignored by the big birds, were a group of twenty or so very busy little birds whose name I never discovered. They were pale grey and black with red throats and red under the wings. I adored them and a glimpse of their happy red was enough to fill me with delight all day.
The middle branches, those that were directly in front of my flat were populated almost entirely by crows and a few pigeons. There were so many of them and they looked at me in such a knowing way when I sat at my window that I felt sure that one day they would attack and the glass would prove to be a useless defense against their razor sharp beaks. But they never did, preferring to fight and argue endlessly amongst themselves. There were two groups who sat facing each other on separate branches, the left hand group sat on branches that were slightly higher than the right hand group. Like the Montagues and the Capulets, they hurled insults at each other all day long and jumped up and down on their respective branches. When a fight broke out between two crows from rival sides, the others would jump up and down and shout encouragement from the sides. Sometimes, a crow would get so involved that it fell off its perch and only remembered to save itself in the nick of time. They were fun to watch, the young ones especially, and after a while I found them a lot less ugly. They were also rather tolerant of other birds I discovered. For hidden amongst the crows was a woodpecker, and two cuckoos. Imagine my joy when one day I glimpsed a brown-headed barbet amongst them!
One day I looked out of the window and saw, to my surprise, a young hawk sitting not far from the crows. It shuffled awkwardly to the right every time a crow came too close, but other than that, it did nothing, staring into space with dejection written into every feather of its young body.
The next day the hawk was still there. This time the other crows weren’t so polite either. One bird in particular kept circling around the hawk taking little nips at the bird, which the latter pretended to ignore. I waved at the crow, hoping to scare it away. But by this time the birds were either used to me or they weren’t able to see through glass, for neither hawk nor crow paid me the slightest heed.
Seeing the hawk wasn’t retaliating, other crows from the Capulet side (the left hand side, bigger, nastier lot) began to taunt the young hawk. They did it sneakily at first, waiting for the hawk to fall asleep (which it did often as it was obviously weak from hunger). But after a while they stopped bothering to wait and came at the hawk in knots of twos and threes. Each time the hawk just flapped its wings feebly while the crows, cawing with glee, attacked from all sides. I couldn’t bear to watch any longer, and so I leaned out and shouted at the crows. This time they noticed and were so surprised that they forgot the hawk.
Then the attacks began again.
It became a game. When I went to the window and shouted the crows stopped attacking the young hawk. Fly away, I silently begged the hawk, next time I may not be able to come in time. But the hawk remained stubbornly where it was, steadily losing feathers and flesh. Afternoon came and went and I grew more and more fearful, until around tea-time…a miracle happened. A medium sized crow suddenly flew to the hawk’s defense, attacking the other crows first from the rear and then settling itself beside the hawk, going for the eyes of the other crows with its powerful beak. Taken by surprise the other crows fell back. Luckily I was there when this happened and saw it all.
Eventually the attacks grew fewer and fewer. Night fell and I was forced to turn my attention inwards. The next morning as soon as it was light I was at the window again. Hawk and crow were still there, sitting back to back like Bonnie and Clyde, eyeball to eyeball with the other crows. The hawk seemed a little better, perkier, curious. It hopped up and down the branch, examining things with its beak. Why doesn’t it fly away I wondered?
The answer came to me at noon when the heroic crow flew to a nearby dustbin they all enjoyed raiding and returned with something in its beak. It placed what looked like the carcass of a mouse carefully beside the hawk. At first the hawk pretended indifference, then when the crow looked elsewhere it took two short hops and grabbed the morsel of food. Satisfied, the crow flew off to look for something more.
This went on for three days. The hawk just sat there, whilst the crow went off to look for food and fought off fresh attacks. Then on the third day, the hawk unfolded its wings and tried to fly. It didn’t get very far, about a foot and half into the air, before the strength seemed to go out of it and it half fell half glided back to its perch.
I was at the window when it happened, and when the hawk regained its spot I wasn’t sure whether to be sad or relieved.
After that, I knew it was only a question of time before the young hawk regained its confidence. So I neglected my work and spent more time at the window watching that strange friendship. If I hadn’t seen the way it had happened with my own eyes I wouldn’t have thought it possible for a crow to rush to the defense of a hawk. Life was so much stranger than fiction, I thought, unaware that my frequent trips to the window had been noticed by someone.
When the hawk finally flew away I called my parents, elated. After the usual hello, how are you, ‘Babuji*,’ I said excitedly, ‘guess what I saw? A crow protecting a hawk.’
‘You what? Who are you talking about? Your neighbour, your boss? A film you saw? I bet it was a film on TV. Don’t watch so much TV. You should go out more, meet people your own age,’ my father said.
Yes, yes, yes. I held the phone away from my ear and the words blurred, fading slowly into silence. Then the anxious, ‘Hello? Are you there beti?’
‘Yes.’ I say wearily, ‘I’m here.’
‘Are you eating well? Everything ok? You can always come back if you don’t like it.’
‘I’m fine.’ I put the phone down.
A few months later the old banyan tree gave fruit. And a new lot of birds arrived, mainly parakeets but also six coppersmith barbets, to feast on the lovely red fruit. Coppersmith barbets. I could hardly believe my eyes. Smaller than their cousin the brown headed barbet, the coppersmith barbets loved to eat, and all through the day I would see them darting from one cluster of fruit to the next. They were so pretty I couldn’t take my eyes off them. Their bodies were the wonderful fresh spring green striped with a darker shade—somewhere between dark blue and dark green—that characterized the entire barbet clan. But their heads were just spectacular. Kohl rimmed eyes were highlighted with a ring of lemon yellow and around that, to make the eyes even more special, some artist had painted another ring of—of dark, dark blue. Shades of turquoise and ultramarine ringed the neck. On its forehead and on the chest was a blaze of pure scarlet. To draw attention to the scarlet dot on the chest, the same unknown artist had put another spot of lemon yellow just above it.
In the morning the birds would sun themselves on the telephone pole in the compound of the neighbouring building. The gentle morning sun did lovely things to their already spectacular colouring. But the barbets were not alone on the telephone pole. They had to fight the sparrows and the parrots. Eventually, the three species found a compromise and space was made for all, even for the few crows who stayed on the telephone line. I mention the other birds because one day I noticed something strange. A crow had settled itself on the arm of the telephone pole where the barbets sat all together. The contrast was really shocking: the barbets, elegant, graceful, petite, and the large crow, gawky, black and vulgar. The barbets seemed equally confused about the crow. But since they were small, there was little they could do except ignore it. But this only seemed to distress the crow further, who ruffled its feathers and made bleak pronouncements on the unfairness of the world in its ugly unmusical voice. The call of the barbets, by contrast, was sweet and bell-like, like someone hitting a copper drum.
Every day the crow would desert its own kind and sit between the barbets, trying to make itself appear smaller than it was, as if this would somehow transform it into one of them. Of course it only made the crow look more ridiculous. But the crow didn’t care. It was as besotted by the beauty of the barbets as I was. Towards ten to eleven o’clock, when the barbets flew off to feed and to sun themselves on the topmost branches of the banyan, the crow would reluctantly rejoin its own kind.
On one such day, as I followed the ascent of the barbets with my eyes, I noticed that there was a man at the window of the elegant apartment I liked so much. He was waving and blowing air kisses at me. I leapt away from the window as if it had suddenly become toxic, then I went back and drew the curtains, plunging the room into darkness. My lovely airy apartment had become a glass cage. I had to get out.
Grabbing my keys and handbag, I wrenched open the main door and left.
On the sidewalk, I still felt followed, observed. I walked very fast till I found a barista and entered. Only after I’d ordered my coffee did I realize that my feet had led me to my favourite café, the one with the little outdoor courtyard under a banyan tree. I sat down under the tree. Only one other table was occupied. The coffee and muffin began to take effect. Slowly I relaxed, started pondering ways to deal with my neighbour. I was so caught up in my thoughts that I never noticed the crow until it was too late and my muffin was gone. What’s more, the bird was so impudent it didn’t go far—landing barely two feet away. Had I not encountered the crow-that-tried-to-be-a-barbet or the hawk’s saviour I would have probably thrown something at the crow. But because of those other birds, I just watched it rather tolerantly, the way one would a naughty two year old.
‘What a naughty bird. Shall I get you another one?’ The voice was deep, male, and tolerantly amused. I looked up, words of rejection already forming themselves in my mind.
‘They are funny creatures, crows, so ugly, but surprisingly human too.’
‘Y…you like them?’ I found myself stammering. He was very good-looking, in an easy open cosmopolitan way.
‘I’ll tell you a true story about crows, a real Bombay story.’ He pulled his chair closer. ‘There was an old man living in an apartment building like the one above. He was a rich businessman. When he was seventy five, his wife, who was some years younger than him, died. But before dying she made him promise to take her ashes to Banaras. So he left his businesses and home in the charge of his sons, signing powers of attorneys that gave them total control over his wealth, and went off to Banaras. When he returned, he found no one at the station to pick him up and when he arrived at his home, he could not enter. When he tried to call his sons, they wouldn’t pick up the phone and his credit cards wouldn’t work. He had been turned into a beggar.Eventually an old chaukidar gave him shelter under the stairs. But at 6am the awoke him and begged him to leave. The old man didn’t live long on the streets. But whatever he got he shared with the crows and pigeons. Soon the birds all knew him and they would come and perch on his shoulders and eat unafraid out of his hands. When he died, the crows followed his corpse to the cremation ground, and until his body became ash they remained there, mourning him.’
When at last I found my voice I asked, ‘How do you know this story?’
‘The man was my grandfather,’ he replied.
Suddenly I knew what I was going to do. I didn’t let myself think. ‘You can see the crows up close from my apartment. I watch them all the time. Would you like to come and see them one day?’
* Babuji: Indian terms of respect