TO DO or not to do…
By: Shreya Parashar
Like everyday, I am flying and brooding; I get profound when I fly. I am TO DO, not to be done, it’s my name. I am an ordinary pigeon with various shades of grey. Honestly speaking, I am an outcast amongst my folks because I showed my aversion to eating food that humans throw at us. I fail to understand them, humans. First they lay the trap by throwing grains at us and when we fall for the bait to pick on easy meal, they shoo us away. Like duh!
So, I rebelled.
My day starts late. Unlike others, I am not an early bird. I take time to get up; I flutter and hop around before deciding on where to go. It doesn’t matter but I get bored if I have to take the same flight route everyday. Oh, looks like I got carried away…
This place seems deserted. I am flying above an abandoned place with jaded workshop sheds, barbed boundaries and no humans. That’s some relief! Largely these two-legged ones act as if they own everything around them. They have not spared the skies too. Such pests!
Oh wait, is that a sparrow, are their kinds still around?
“Hello there…long time no see!”
So much for greeting fellow birds, all I get is muffled grunts and pants in return. God forbid a day when we become callous like the two-legged beasts. The recent phenomena amuses me, the humans keep staring at some sort of thing in their hands and talk to the thing with wired ears as if spies on some mission. I usually get carried away, don’t I?
I glide closer to show my disapproval when he starts a free fall. I dive down to save him in the nick of time. It’s a she; no black ring around her neck. She is still giddy but smiles.
“I am Ray…”
“….of hope?” I quip. She smiles again.
“TO DO.” We shake feathers.
“I shouldn’t be out this far, will you drop me home,” she asks. I oblige and fly along. She enters one of the many deserted workshops that I had spotted earlier. I am stunned as enter, witnessing the biggest mass nesting that I have ever seen. The entire workshop is converted into hundreds of nests, rows after rows, neatly stacked from one pipe to another. Hay, grass, plastic- a lot of it, cloth, even cigarette butts- the nicotine keeps the ticks in check. I whistle, almost.
It looks like a war zone with scores of sparrows limping, trying to fly, others bed-ridden just chirping, anger mixed with hunger. Ray tells me that her specie is the most affected by mobile phone base stations as the radiations not just harm the ones around but their next generation as well. Ah, that thing the humans carry around like prized possessions- mobiles.
She points towards the baby sparrows; they don’t look good either. Next, I spot few healthy sparrows teaching the weaklings to fly.
Hop- N- Glide.
“I learn in this team,” Ray says. I had already noticed her clipped wing outdoors. I nod.
“We have a purpose here- to survive the ill- effects of technology. Together.”
“Can I join you?”
Ray smiles and turns towards a room. I follow her.
TRAINING
I enter this room to see pigeons, crows, swallows, swifts and even a cuckoo, all focused. I am welcomed amongst these volunteers who want to give a helping wing to sparrows, to bring them back to their normal lives.
“We can help them fly, build nests for the sick, hunt for food, signal danger (human and cat)”, says the trainer, an old sparrow. She thanks us for joining and announces lunch break. A miniature human comes out of the clock as it strikes two.
DONG
DONG
I laugh till I cry.
