An avian eviction
For somebody who has spent a major* part of his life in Mumbai, it’s difficult to call anything else home. A syndrome common to all those who know Mumbai is all about. You either love it or hate it. Third option is out of poll. Those who love it end up spending a lot of time there despite all the inhumane constraints and infrastructural baloney. Those who hate it spend the rest of their lives avoiding it at all cost. You can’t blame either of the two parties for the way they feel about the island city in question.
In comparison, Gurgaon is a bad dream that Mumbai has when it finally goes to sleep. Powered by concrete, topped with malls and decorated by dust, this city is as non-personal as it can get. Although it spectacularly sustains the corporate face of India, with momentary hiccups of course, there’s no denying of its lack of culture. A city comes into its own with time; something Gurgaon hasn’t had the luxury of so far. Two decades ago, there were farmers all around ready for their harvests. Today, they are ultra-rich, having sold their fields and livelihood, to embrace a unique nouveau richeness. They’ve got hummers and beemers in their garage but this windfall has only exposed the vacuum in the character of the city. Or a wannabe city, if you may.
I moved north over 2.5 years ago and have been living in a gated community called Nirvana Country. It was and still is worth noticing that a majority of the people around me aren’t from here. The only locals you get to see are either the aforementioned richie richs (who are ‘bijnessmen’ in different sectors) or the humble labourers (who didn’t get a share of the big pie and work as autowallahs, etc.). The pendulum swings between these two extremes as far as the quest for local identity goes. For the rest of us, we are mere visitors inhabiting Gurgaon for our selfish reasons. Chances are we’d move on when the time is right.
Unlike the main characters of this blog post, who will be forced to move because the time is never right for them to leave on their own terms.
As you can see above, there is a green plot behind our apartment. It had been empty since even before we moved in. Seemingly abandoned but certainly belonging to somebody. Over the past several months, we’ve noted the change. With little to no human interference, the plot gradually became alive. Small trees, shrubs, bushes, creepers and essentially a thick blanket of envy has grown over time. And in them, several birds — spotted owls, peacocks, peahens, white-breasted kingfishers, drongos, pied mynahs, green bee eaters, wagtails, babblers, laughing dove, pigeons, house crows, kites, sparrows, red-wattled lapwings, sunbirds, bulbuls, swifts , hoopoe — naming only the ones we’ve managed to spot so far — have found solace. A mini-bird sanctuary, if you will, has come into order. A paradise, dotted by sleathy mongooses, slithering monitor lizards, harmless rat snakes, overzealous squirrels and hueful butterflies, worth staring at for hours if you’re the kind who enjoys capturing nature’s poetry in motion.
Now, here’s the sad part: There are plans underway to scrape the plot for an impending construction. Which basically means destruction of the ecosystem in place. Compromise? What’s that? The green shroud will go and so will the birds. They won’t have any other choice. Nobody cares whether there is a nest with two tiny eggs in it. That’s the least of our concerns. Where will they move to? Not our problem. They’ll figure it out. Apparently. Why? Because they are used to adjusting to our whims. They won’t knock on our courts of justice. Simply vanishing has been their MO for ages. Only for us to cry some years later that the native birds are quitting on Gurgaon. Just like sparrows and vultures did in Mumbai.
Come to think of it, isn’t it crazy that the scummiest of all species gets to decide who will leave? Particularly, when we are not in a position to rehabilitate anybody who doesn’t have money? Forget birds, even roofless humans won’t get to live on this plot if they can’t prove their financial credentials. The not-so-funny part being the ownership of a piece of earth that doesn’t even belong to us. Ad nauseam, an ongoing decay of our conviction in property. And that’s funny.
*major in spite the fact that we spend one-third of our existence dozing (a 30-year-old has effectively spent a decade asleep) and the stakes go up when you consider the sleeplessness of Mumbai
