The bird that taught

The title of the contest took me back to 2018 when I felt I had hit the rock bottom of my life. The days when smiles were the only masks we wore and hand sanitizers were a symbol of sophistication. Legends have said one must learn to live alone and be happy with one’s own company which has now-a-days been further accentuated by social media. I was a worshipper of - " I am happy alone". I do not know why I felt this false sense of self sufficiency and ego. Maybe it was a defensive way of mine to cover my frustration and bask in fleeting happiness.

Those were also the days when I was preparing for India’s toughest examination-the Union Public Service Commission (Civil Services) cocooned in an extremely dingy room of Vijaynagar, North-West Delhi, India. Every year 3-4 lakh candidates appear for the examination out of which a 1000 or so are selected for various prestigious posts in the Government of India after clearing the three stage examination. Aspirants with high ambition, from nook and corners of the country, flock in Delhi, Bangalore and other cities to undergo coaching for this examination.

Once you're enrolled the coaching process is again a tedious journey of a year of standing in queues early before the scheduled timing to bag a seat in the front row ( cause how else will you manage to learn in a class of 500), skip breakfast, faint, attend lectures, run your pens at lightening speed to take down bulky notes , rush back home or hostels and study. This goes on for a year everyday. Yes every single day, even on Sundays, the exception being the gazetted holidays like August 15th.

“You have to study for 16 hours, forget your friends, everyone will know once you make it there”, "this examination is nothing less than a Tapasya "(mediation)  kind of statements always echoed in my ears.

Such statements do not just make you nervous but also hyper paranoid and since there is no guidebook to clear this examination aspirants from small town fall into this quagmire cause they want to give it their 100 %. My life was an unending circle of 'nothing else happening' with no tangential take offs! Actually you know what, a fishmonger manages to spend her entire life in a fish market and not get bothered by the stench cause that is where she has been living. Take her out and she would know the gravity of the pungency. I lived a solitary life of lonely stench and depression without consciously knowing about my illness. I had friends and yet I was lonely. I smiled a lot in the reel and wept an ocean in real. How I wish now I had someone back then to pull me out of the black hole. I sought help by speaking about my feelings to a couple of friends in vain. I do not blame them cause most of us do not really know what to say or do in such situations. We end up giving expert suggestions or ask them to ignore. What I started doing after learning from my experience is a story for another day.

Enter Chini, the baby sparrow who I managed to rescue on the road before it was about to get stomped by a slow moving car. The back wheel boarded on my right feet instead but I was saved.

The baby bird lay inside my hands in trauma and fear and with even more confusing hands I looked at the tiny creature. I mention the word 'confusing' cause few men saw me taking the bird with me and warned me to not take the baby away from the mother lest it dies. I waited underneath her home , the tree to locate her mother in vain again. Fearing the baby might get killed by wild dogs I took the bird straight to my hostel room. My roommate, (let us call her Divya ) was overjoyed to have her and I must accept it was her who took the charge of nurturing the bird. Divya fed her with rice and dal (lentil soup) using cutips, wrapped her in a tissue paper like a blanket for comfort and warmth. We made a discarded shoebox her home and added some branches to make it more natural. She named the bird Chini. 

Now starts the real thing- the justification of my write-up to the title of the contest. The other side of the story is Divya did not let me too much close near Chini. I would spend most of my time studying in the mess ( eating hall) nothing less than a dungeon and occasionally visit my room to relax and play with Chini but mostly in vain cause Divya would ignore me away “Chini is sleeping now,” “do not touch her like that” , “let her sleep here with me”. The growing camaraderie between Divya and Chini not only made me jealous but I felt a sense of alienation. To many it might seem like a silly issue, a very little thing to really invest one’s time upon. But aren’t the little things that matter? To say my depression was exacerbated by this episode is not an audacity I believe. 

A week went by and I could have chini only for a couple of hours when Divya was not around. 

Needless to say I loved the baby, fed her with my hands, sang to her, kept the fan off in case she managed to fly, watching her like a failed lover with sweat drenched eyes (July heat).

The lawyer in Anton Chekhov’s ‘The Bet’ found himself closer to God in his solitary confinement for 15 years. I do not know if I went closer to god but I definitely became closer to my own self and made peace with 

my feelings against Divya. I loved Chini. Divya loved Chini as well. We all love in our own ways and when we love someone we want them to be loved even more. Love, care and kindness are never in tandem with jealousy and possessiveness. I watched Divya and Chini close and candid with eyes of happiness, hugged them together and let them be. I guess I changed.

It was not so easy I tell you.