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Chennai
Hyderabad
Where have all the sparrows gone?
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The twittering of sparrows was once part of our lives. But, of late, one rarely sees these charming birds, leave alone hear them.
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IT WAS two or three years ago that I suddenly realised the absence of these dear creatures once so common in Madras that was. Very much part of our growing up, were the several stories in which this homely bird featured.
One of these was the plotless tale told to toddlers, usually while the harried mother tried to induce in them an interest in eating their lunch/dinner, where one sparrow brought a grain of rice to make the food, then a second sparrow brought a second grain of rice, and then a third brought another, and so on till infinity, or more fortunately till she had achieved her objective of feeding her child or simply left the obstinate child to starve, in disgust.
Homebound as it was, and lowly in its flying prowess in the hierarchy of birds, the sparrow was the natural confidante of the lovelorn film heroine of those days (in the weirdly - named `Bus Stop', if my memory serves me right). In the plaintive song, "Chittu kuruvi, chittu kuruvi, seidhi theriyuma", she shares her sorrow with her daily companion about her husband who had not returned home from his journey.
During somnolent summer afternoons that stretched into lazier evenings around the well in the inner courtyard of the street house, the chatterings and scoldings of these birds (did the females insist on having the last word here too?), formed a scarcely heard but evidently subliminally felt background for family gossip and endless cups of coffee.
Why have these charming birds suddenly vacated Chennai? It cannot be the reduction of greenery alone, and Chennai is still quite green compared to other metropolises. In Mumbai recently, a city that spouts concrete rather than plants, I saw hundreds of sparrows carrying on their lives in the old familiar way, battling for grain, in a most inhospitable terrain, next to the railway track, dirty and dusty.
After many years of living in an apartment, we are once again in a house with a garden. However, apart from the ubiquitous crow, a pair of squabbling mynahs, five nervous sisters out of seven, and one absolutely enchanting little honey bird that comes and goes, our garden is host to nothing else. Will the sparrow come into our garden, ever? But, as my husband says, realist that he is, "You cannot have two cats in residence and expect to have a bird population in the garden!"
MAYA NARASIMHAN
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