Pigeon Shit or what ??

 Life has strangest ways of squaring up things. 

The story finds its roots in a time nearly 3 years ago, right after one of the ‘happy new years’ when a not-so-young couple moved into a new apartment with 2 big balconies.

The lady of the house found a prefect outlet for her gardening dreams and decided to load one of the balconies with a variety of plants.

The man, belonging to the usual lazy-good-for-nothing-culturally-challenged category was horticulturally challenged as well so didn’t really have a great deal of opinion on it, and anyways even if he did, it is questionable as to how much would it have mattered.

So the balcony was decorated with a great deal of plant-ware. Efforts were undertaken to water them regularly. Neighbors were requested to keep the plants hydro-plenished during out-of-home vacation days. Other days, the domestic helps had strict orders on plants’ maintenance. The efforts bore results as the new saplings started to bud and flowers and new leaves started to show in the pots.

There was an unfortunate side effect of this bountiful growth of nature, the pigeon-shit, literally and figuratively speaking.

Amidst the concrete jungles that our cities have become, the pigeons found a 50 square feet of region that resembled somewhat of their natural habitat and where they could feed and de-feed themselves, leaving behind a collage of white and green patterns made out of their fecal matter.

Amongst all the different type of living and non-living creatures, the pigeons became the sworn enemies of the human inhabitants of that 50 square feet of the planet (followed by squirrels but the good part of the squirrels was that they did not treat the balcony space as a ‘sulabh-shuachalya’) 

A variety of solutions were put in place with varying degrees of success but it was one of those hard facts of life (e.g. taxes) that you didn’t like but you couldn’t do much about.

Then something happened. Something “happy” and “new” just around the new years.

 A ma-ma pigeon laid a couple of eggs in one of the balconies.

The couple thought that the eggs probably won’t survive but still for some strange reason left the eggs in one of the flower pots and in a place where they could be seen easily.

The ma-ma pigeon came every day and probably did what was necessary to hatch the eggs because after sometime a couple of baby pigeons popped out.

Those tiny birds that came out, a form of life, they were, well, words can’t describe what they were but what was even more touching was how the ma-ma pigeon came to do her function of raising those new borns. She would just sit right next to the new borns, covering them under her body, giving them the necessary body heat, food etc and just wouldn’t budge. I mean, it’s a bird we are talking about. She has wings. She could fly. But no, day after day and night after night she just stayed there letting the new saplings grow.

Life touches you in the strangest ways.

The whole episode touched the human inhabitants of that neighborhood very much. They tried to leave some food for the ma-ma. The domestic help was given special instructions so that the ma-ma doesn’t get scared or bothered too much. And the people just watched the ma-ma day and night from behind the curtains to not let her feel intimidated. Even attempts at taking a picture of her were done with extreme stealth. The determination on how a ma-ma pigeon worked to raise her kids was just too overwhelming. The very sworn enemy species was given a family welcome.

It was indeed a happy new year.

Of course the couple knew that one day, when these birds will grow up, they will come and mess the very balcony that sheltered them and will become the sworn enemies of people there.

But then these are just the birds. The supposedly much evolved human beings show that trait too, that is, to betray the very hand that fed them, the very relations that supported them in the darkest hour, the very society that raised them and bomb the very cities where they were once raised.