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The roller rooster flight

R.V. SMITH on Delhi's pigeons and peeping Toms

Two pigeons roosting on a ventilator ledge, their forms silhouetted by the light burning in the inside room. It's the same scene every night. There's a cat on the lower terrace patiently waiting for its chance to get at them. But the survival instinct has helped the pigeons to select a safe perch. Sometimes the female is hardly visible for it reclines low on the ledge. But its mate is always alert, at least this is what a peeping Tom imagines whenever he looks out of his bathroom window and hears the croaking of the frogs making merry after a shower in the nearby park. Peeping Tom surely because how else would one describe someone who intrudes on the privacy of a sleeping pair!

Incidentally, the man who lent his name to the expression was Tom, the tailor. He was the one who peeped from a window when Lady Godiva rode in the nude through the streets of medieval Mercia in accordance with the conditions laid down by her husband. The Earl had commanded all citizens to stay behind closed doors and not to look out under pain of death.

To come back to the pigeons, perhaps one of the largest flocks rests every night on the domes of the Jama Masjid in Delhi. The belief is that after every azaan they make three rounds of the masjid and its surroundings, setting down only after the muezzin ends his high-decibel intonation of the call for prayer. And that is five times a day.

In 1857, when the sepoy leaders climbed the dome to marshal their men by waving flags from on top, they say the pigeons did not get disturbed. The flock flew away only when the cannonading started during the attack on the city by the British.

The arrival

Before Shahjahan built this masjid, where were the pigeons? Some say on Pahari Bhojla or at Nizamuddin. Others opine that they were brought from Agra, progeny of the thousands once maintained by Akbar. But that sounds a bit far-fetched, doesn't it?

Pigeons have the knack of homing in on their own. How else did they reach the remote DDA flats where the two of them roost on that particular ledge?

Last night the pair was restless. Was it the moths or the mosquitoes bothering them or the fact that the cat was feasting on an unfortunate rat? Even a peeping Tom can be sympathetic, you know.

Incidentally, poor Tom the tailor did not want to eye a nude Lady Godiva. It was just that her mount neighed and he, a lover of horses, impulsively craned his neck. But he lost it, for the furious Earl did not forgive him. In this case, however, one hope the necks of the two sleeping birds will be safe from the peeping Tom below.

Coming back to the Delhi mosque, the northern verandah of the Jama Masjid is the one far removed from public view. It faces the Dariba, where its Kabuli Darwaza in 1739, saw "rivers of blood" flow during the invasion of Nadir Shah. The verandah provides refuge to the old and infirm, the sick and the destitute, who are even fed here by people returning home after the namaz.

A goblet, a mat and a quilt are among the possessions of these poor people who are either passing through the Capital or on a pilgrimage of mosques and shrines. They may be from Bengal, Bihar or Kerala or even from places like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, but some are definitely local invalids who have nowhere else to go.

Flocking space

Surprisingly, it is to the northern verandah that most of the pigeons flock. Like humans they also seek peace in isolated places after congregating on the dome from where they circle the masjid whenever the azaan is given. Food also perhaps attracts them to the northern verandah, for they find good pickings here.

The pigeons have been among the few constant features of the masjid ever since the time it was built in 1656. Pigeons like to dwell mostly in historical buildings where nobody interferes with them.

The belief that they are sayyids, who like to be present at all the five prayers is part of the myth that is associated with birds in most religions.

The neelkanth may be a symbol of Mahadev and the dove of the Holy Ghost but what do the pigeons in St. Mark's Square in Rome or the ones at the Town Hall in Delhi symbolise?

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