House sparrows

Living in a one BHK, old man and his old woman are sometimes guests to calls of koyals and parakeets in summer; and is not the same as watching them at the window sill; they have unwound the wall clock; the HMT manual wrist watches of both find a place in a Godrej locker; bird calls rhyme their lives; koyals, parakeets, crows ...; Ajoba wants to be with them; Aji a no-no; Aji and Madhavi like the window sill clean and neat; pigeons are not being entertained, firmly. A few months now; Ajoba in his wooden cot near the window is woken up by a chirp; tired bones do not stir; a second cheep ... not sure if it is the same sparrow... pulls out Ajoba from his bed.... to Marie biscuits served in a stainless plate on the window sill .... the sparrows land up as Ajoba watches from his bed .... putting on wait the morning and the coffee of Aji. 'I want one or many of them to park on me one morning; waltz on me,' Ajoba tells a wispy Aji; comes back Aji: 'Pagal.' Some mornings crows land up, scaring sparrows, caw...caw.. 'my ancestors', remarks Ajoba and Aji nods in belief. Into their coffees, Ajoba pauses over a few lines of poetry ... and this morning is into The Best of Gerald Durrell, chosen by Lee Durrell. A take from The Amateur Naturalist: ...I was two years old. I went for a walk along a mountain road in India accompanied by my ayah....made my way to a ditch nearby where I discovered to my delight, two huge khaki-coloured slugs brought out by the rain. They were slowly wending their way along the ditch, leaving glittering trails of slime behind them ....I have had great fun being introduced to and playing with a duck-billed platypus that looked like Donald Duck in a fur coat, but at the same time I get enormous pleasure by simply looking out of my kitchen window and watching the sparrow bustling about in the hedge beneath.' Sparrows are not any more common sparrows in Mumbai and Indian cities. Ajoba sets out for his walk with chana in his pockets to feed squirrels speeding up trees and down roads. He had picked up the book on September 29, 2000 at lovely Landmark in Chennai with best friend Muthuswamy Padmanabhan; Landmark is no more; they went for a beach walk and lunch at Woodlands. Like sparrows, Padmanabhan is scarce ...maybe migrated with his computer son to US..