Crows and coucals

Sleep broke at around 4; for the first time ever made me filter kapi as Rama was in a snore. With hot kapi not as good as the Rama version, sat down to random read A Necklace of Skulls, Collected Poems, by Eunice De Souza.  In Aunt: My aunt loves bright colours./Widowhood be damned./ Ninety-one years be damned./ She reads newspapers from/first page to last/looking for a cheerful story. Got out for a walk before morning newspapers hit the door. Newsvendor Patil is always on time. There are no cheerful stories to read. Papers have turned me a fake currency; maybe, they are not wrong. Wished for some cheerful moments... and today they came. Maybe De Souza is a talisman.  We have become friends somewhat. Coucal and me. On the gates of Management Development Centre, LIC, LIC Colony, it sat and walked; some five feet away, me stood on the footpath; do not know if it is the same coucal of a few days ago; from the gates it flew down to the footpath, flew up to a copper pod; went back to the walls of the gate; it opened its beak for a soft call; looked around when two coucals flew over to a mango tree inside the LIC compound; me stood watching as crows formed a crowd over and above me and coucal; the bird shifted to a bokeda tree inside the LIC green; the goondaish crow crowd cawed together; the coucal flew down and disappeared into a hedge; the crows looked cheap as louts do; the two coucals on the mango tree kept quiet; about 10 minutes of an early morning walk and me walked on. Coucal Point. LIC Colony throws up friends from the many trees in the area; passing Karuna Hospital, the now certain glimpse of bats (flying fox) in a chatter ahead of settling down, upside down; their browns glimmer as the sun hits pans them; and then bumped into a new friend, a beagle called Toffee; the owner does not mind me giving it a rub. A small hound, wikipedia says. Toffee has sad eyes, saddest me has seen. Some mornings are blank; and coming home sinks into the arm chair, upset. Today, it was different as the coucal will be with me through the day. No reading newspapers. Went back to De Souza. To a Naturalist: Mine's an humbler occupation,/hunting dog ticks, bed bugs, ants/ whose steadfastness I can rarely match./Fed up of concrete,/ a rat decided to/ take up residence in my oven./ Watchman and broom soon settled him./The wild parakeets chortle their way/through the seed box, three times a day./ As for fat pigeons/pushing each other off my air conditioner,/ there's no escape from their/orgasmic cries.