Maya’s father was a farmer in India. Before inheriting land from his father, he had been a boatman on the Jamuna river. From its glacier at Yamunotri, high in the icy Himalayas, the Jamuna snakes across the lower plains of tropical heat and the deluge of monsoon rains and cold, cold winters, past the city of Agra and behind the shining Taj Mahal.
The Taj Mahal was built long ago, but the river had been there for a long long time even before that. It only changed course a little bit each year, determined by the monsoon rains. The rains always came after a hot dry summer, to flush the land and turn it green again.
Every day Maya’s father would pole his boat full of people across the Jamuna.
He had been friends then, with another boatman he referred to as Pagla Baba—the mad babaji: one of the Hindu mystics who roam alone with no material possessions.
Pagla Baba had given up his boat to wander the land. But years later he came to their house one day to meet his friend. Maya had heard her father Abhijit talk about him. But it was the first time Maya had seen him.
He was a lean man, naked from the waist up, so wiry you could see his veins and muscles. His body was a burnt coffee brown, his hair hung in dreadlocks. He carried a simple jute bag over his shoulder and had worn sandals on his feet. He wore just a sarong, with a shawl for the cold.
He had a beard, as matted as his hair. He had a hook of a nose and furrows on his brow. But it was his eyes that fascinated Maya. They were large, dark brown and bright, with a wild crazy light in them.
Maya was only six years old then. He looked at her face with a knowing glint and nodded as if he had understood something. Then he suddenly laughed and said,
‘What are you doing here little one? You do not belong with us. You have the soul of a Sarus crane, you belong with them. You’d better stay free like them when you grow up!’
He gave her a closer and more intense look, and then laughed again, saying ‘Hahh! You think I’m joking, huh? Remember, there is nothing you cannot do if you follow your dreams!’
He leaned forward, his face suddenly gentle and kind. Placing his hands on Maya’s shoulders he said to her, ‘Freedom.’
She was thinking about this later as she drifted off to sleep. The two men, Pagla Baba and her father, talked quietly on the other side of the wall. In their tiny house with the white paint now yellowed and peeling, the old electric fan whirred quietly in a corner, pushing out the still muggy air. Frogs croaked in the rice paddies outside.
She woke in the silence of the pre-dawn darkness. It seemed that a tap on the window had woken her, but she could not be sure. She sat up and looked out at the starlit night. She saw the silhouette of two big birds, very close to the house.
She got out of bed and went outside, carefully and quietly opening and closing the door.
It was autumn and a cold fog lay across the endless rice fields. In winter the farmers here plant wheat and mustard, but through the monsoon and into autumn, as far as the eye can see there are rice fields, their green stalks shifting like waves in the wind. Sometimes the wind seems to play with them, carving S shapes. Sometimes it just roars across the rice in a straight line, especially in the monsoon season, and the rice stalks bend until it seems like a flat green road is opening up in the endless plains.
She walked to the edge of their land balancing easily on the narrow bundhs which separated the rice fields. There she saw the Sarus cranes standing in the water. She stepped off the bundh and into the water that reached up to her waist. The cold bit into her legs and suddenly she was really wide awake. She walked slowly through the water, wading across the muddy bottom, towards the cranes.
One of them, the male, was standing on one foot. ‘How do you do that?’ she said. He looked at her solemnly, the rising sun catching the colour of his red eyes. He moved his elegant purple head sideways to look down at her.
‘It’s easy if you know how, I’ve been doing it since I was born’, he said.
Maya tried to lift one leg up and balance but it was difficult, especially in the cold water. She almost fell.
The crane’s eyes glinted and he spread his wings briefly. He seemed to be laughing.
To Maya who was much shorter than him, his wings were enormous, almost blocking out the sky.
‘What’s your name?’ she said to him.
‘My name is Earth,’ he said. ‘Her name is Sky,’ he added, looking at his mate, who was at the edge of a huge tangled circle of twigs and grass floating on the water. Inside were two big eggs. Sky was bent over the nest, repositioning the eggs with her long beak. She looked up briefly at Maya and said: ‘And our next child is going to be called Water.’
‘But there are two eggs,’ said Maya.
‘Well we haven’t decided on the second one’s name yet,’ said Sky a bit impatiently, as she walked on to the nest and slowly lowered herself into it, settling herself on to the eggs.
‘Maybe you can help me, I have been meaning to try and find out what these things are all about,’ he said, glancing up with a tilt of his head. He looked towards the huge electricity pylons and the thick cables they held, that walked across the land like giants.
‘They are for electricity,’ said Maya proudly. ‘For the big hydro electric project to the north.’ She had asked her parents what they were when the workmen were putting them up just a few months ago.
‘What’s that?’ said Earth.
She thought for a while and then said, ‘To get light. To read at night. For heat when it gets cold. And a fan when it gets hot.’
And she thought for a while more and said ‘For the TV!’
‘Huh?’ said the crane. ‘TV? What’s that?’
‘It’s something like a box, and you can see moving pictures and drawings and see and hear people talking, with music and all,’ she said.
‘Hmm, interesting,’ he said, and she could tell from his voice that he was getting bored.
‘Maybe I should leave,’ Maya thought. She stretched and bounced on her toes, and flapped her wings. She had wings! Something had happened.
With strong, rapid wing beats she powered up into the sky, now beginning to lighten with the first pale pink streaks of the rising sun. She wheeled above the green rice fields, looking down at Earth and Sky who were glancing up at her anxiously.
Sky left the nest. Stretching her neck and throwing back her head she gave a piercing bugling call. Maya answered. Then Earth and Sky ran a few steps and took flight as well. They came up to meet her, flying alongside.
She could hear the wind whistle through their pinions, and through her own. She experimented with the wind; facing into it and soaring; getting above it and gliding; riding warm rising thermals as the sun stirred the air.
Earth and Sky just circled nearby, anxiously it seemed. But soon they came and flew alongside. They chirped at her and she knew it was time to go down.
As she glided down, she heard screams and a sickening thud behind her. The fright unbalanced her and flapping in alarm, she pulled up and around. She saw with horror Earth and Sky lying crumpled in the rice field below the huge electricity pylon.
She flew down, her heart cold with dread. The two big birds lay next to each other, their beautiful long necks now running with fresh bright blood. Their wings were broken and trailed uselessly as they tried to stand up. They fell repeatedly. The strength drained out of their hearts and the glow in their eyes grew dimmer and dimmer.
She stayed with them through the night. In the morning when she awoke, she cried aloud as she saw them lifeless at her feet. Her cries woke the people in the nearby house. As they ran towards her she moved away, half flying and half walking. They gathered around the corpses of the two adult Sarus cranes shaking their heads in sorrow.
Maya suddenly woke up, the cold of the autumn morning on her face. Her mother hurried out anxiously, sweeping her up in a warm shawl. ‘What are you doing out here?’ she asked nuzzling her neck.
‘I was dreaming,’ she said. ‘About the big birds. About the Sarus cranes. And they died.’ She was sobbing as her mother led her into the house.
‘Why did they die?’ asked her mother, whose name was Amrita.
‘Because they hit the wire,’ she said, turning around and pointing at the big pylons stalking across the fields with the heavy cables sagging between them.
‘Oh but they are ok,’ said Amrita, picking her up and cradling her. ‘See?’ and she pointed into the distance and Maya saw the two big birds now more visible in the lifting mist.
‘Oh so they are not dead?’ said Maya, peering at them.
‘They are not dead, they are fine,’ said Amrita.
‘But they can die if they hit the wires?’ said Maya.
Amrita sighed. ‘Yes, they can die if they hit the wires,’ she said.
‘Can you ask them to take the wires away then please,’ said Maya, and she began to cry again, the tears welling into her eyes and her little chest heaving.
‘I will, I will,’ said Amrita, holding Maya close. Her father was up by then and had hurried out and heard what Maya had said. Pagla Baba had also heard her. He laughed and turned to Abhijit saying, ‘Hah! What did I tell you?’
Abhijit smiled.
‘Come in and have some hot chai,’ he said to them. ‘Come inside, and I will tell you what I am going to do.’
As the big old blackened kettle heated on the wood fire, Abhijit took Maya onto his lap and said, ‘I am the headman of our village. That means people listen to me. And I promise at our next meeting, I will get everyone to agree to talk to the government about the wires. I will do something to help the cranes.’
Maya nodded, only barely understanding but knowing that her father would do something for the birds.
They all drank tea as the sun came up and the mist lifted. She walked outside and saw the great birds. Suddenly they started running. They took to the air with strong wing beats and circled up into the sky.
She saw them coming towards her, gliding slowly, side-by-side, wing tip to giant wing tip. They landed gently in front of her. Earth said, ‘Thank you Maya.’
And Sky said, ‘Will you come and see us again sometime?’
‘Yes’ said Maya. Then with powerful wing beats they lifted off, disappearing into the sky in a great arc.
Abhijit came running out then. ‘What are you doing Maya?’ he said anxiously. ‘What happened?’
‘Nothing,’ she said as she turned and walked back into the house with him.
And quietly, to herself, she smiled.