There has been a bird’s nest in my house. Not in my house, but… we have the little area around our house that Dad turned into his little garden. He had been a farmer before he moved to Hyderabad and became a private employee. So, his love for growing the plants was never dead.
He watered them in such a way that there were times the plants rested in peace due to his over-watering. Ufff… He was that man who does everything in an extreme way and gives more than he needs to do. And those poor plants were no exception!
If they had mouths, they would be screaming, ‘We are fed up! Take that damn water can away!’ I could already hear their screams. His love for plants was so great that he didn’t even pluck away the weeds and always received scoldings from Amma for turning a deaf ear to her words.
Sigh… What can I complain about him? He is as weird as me at times. He could match my energy and Amma would be the one yelling at us for being so noisy. She even threatened us that she would throw us out of the house when she was so annoyed. As if we care.
Well… as those plants became bigger, there was this curry leaf tree, which had grown so big. And Appa tied a fence around it. There was a sparrow that came and built its nest. Appa warned everyone in the colony and whoever came to our house for curry leaves to not pluck anything there as there was a sparrow that laid its nest and was laying eggs.
Everyone cooperated. That’s the best part. We have three curry leaf trees. One was taken over by the sparrow, and another was sacked by us as its time came to an end. The third one has become Annapurna for us and other people in our colony. Fresh curry leaves mean they only remember our house.
I don’t know how many eggs that sparrow laid, but after nearly two months, I realized those eggs had turned into little sparrows. I wondered why they didn’t squeak. Maybe their voices were too small.
Even though they were not my pets, nor did I feed them, I and my family just felt assured that they didn’t leave after they became baby sparrows. We still let those sparrows occupy our tree ‘illegally’. I just thought, maybe one day this house would be the center for the all-birds community!
But one day, we discovered that someone had torn the fence. We were angry with the person who did that and sad and scared that the birds might have left. But they weren’t.
Yesterday, it was Sankranthi. Children who were playing kits in front of our house discovered a baby sparrow at the bottom of our guava tree. They were supposed to be in a curry leaf tree nest but not near a guava tree! How did this happen?
And this morning we discovered that those evil kids fished out that baby sparrow and the remaining baby sparrows. Now all four baby sparrows were dead! God, my kanuma is not at all good. The excitement and happiness I felt on Bhogi and Sankranthi were ruined on Kanuma.
Those sparrows were not even related to me. But they hogged my curry leaf tree and lived there. I even thought they would leave one day eventually but not this way.
We need to accept that everyone in our lives does not need to leave us on good terms.