Here in this part of Delhi, I look at crows long enough and am eventually beginning to recognize them. Some have an oval head, some have a little-flattened-but-still-oval head, some wear a cloudy grey throat with richer iron black crown, some when stretch in sky show a slit like ‘v’ in one of their wings. Invariably, they all make sounds other than caw caw caw. Some are thinner, some are larger, some swoosh on my walks but then swiftly turn another direction (perhaps some can even smell coconut oil in my hair), after drinking water some wipe their beaks by perching on dish antenna, some on bare-branched tree of Mango, some on a parapet wall.
When I see crows my senses sharpen. It is said that crows retain memories of human faces. I wonder about this possibility of being recognized while not giving up my own thrill of becoming familiar with nature.
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In June evenings, which spread like a butter yellow of Amul on golden brown toasts, this intense sun also partners with white clouds. In such summer months, when even weather doesn’t disclose much of its plans to seasons. Seasons, who are stationed around weary traffic lights, or hanging out on top of green gantry road signs declaring names of places, crows on my boundary wall, here, prefer flying close to my mother rather than me.
Even though it is me who has been dropping rice and roti in a bowl, my crows feel more comfortable around mother . Perhaps I am confusing proximity with familiarity, or proximity with comfort, in any case, I am happy they see that it is my mother who puts the food out in a cup, for me, to take it out for them. In this regard, I like the crows hovering around her; they recognize human faces but also some other things. Things which are difficult to register. Like daily memories. Like daily effort.
There is one who has made a nest on a Mango tree opposite the bare-branched one. I see it from my window. With beak half-open, when I am dropping off roti, this crow, who is always the first to arrive, as if reserving a seat, this crow who is now hopping closer to me than others, this crow who inspects Delhi Police’s yellow barricades with much alacrity, this crow, who accompanies my oily interface and wind on cyclone landing days of April, May and June, this crow who bullies mynahs, this crow, whom I have not yet completely understood, this crow, who is now becoming a vessel for all my memories related to crows, this crow who is building a nest.
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I have actively dropped food for birds for two years now—filling water bowls, finding leftovers, flicking brown leaves from algae-infested water, scratching the green algae from the bottom, seeing it appear every few days, picking bones out of bowls which raptors leave. In the process, many water-holding dishes have gotten lost: Bengali Fast Foods, Mother Dairy Dahi cups, Amul ice cream tubs, plastic plates, a small earthen pot, a middle-size earthen pot.
When the dish was kept on the window sill, crows knocked it over or mynahs carried it away. When the container was kept on the parapet wall, wind blew it away. In case of pots, they inadvertently broke with in a week. For the first few months I believed none of the birds would be able to see the water bowl if I keep it down. It has to be up, above and at the centre. I would have even conjured a board in the middle of nowhere, just to keep that bowl.
But the relationship of these birds with water doesn’t work that way. They are a species who realized that the Mango tree alongside boundary wall is dying much before I did. One day on seeing me worried and lost (because a tree was being pruned) a gardener had remarked that the bare-branched mango tree is gone. There is a way in which the world deposits around these gone trees and we don’t get to know. Trees get cut and not an indoor plant alerts us! Trees, they hardly come to know how we are feeling! New saplings turn up in our yard and we step on them to take Uber or close the window to begin our zoom meetings!
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The crow with its open beak has been making a nest. The story goes that one evening the half-open-beaked-crow found a new broom on the terrace. We had kept it out in sun. Later, when I went to get the broom, the crow was in the middle of terrace, busy plucking seekh from jhaadu, such that my arrival went unflapped by its wings. The crow did not budge. On being hushed to fly away, the crow went to another corner and waited for me to depart.
When I didn’t budge, the half-open-beaked crow made a detour to a corner of terrace in order to start inspecting the other jhaadus of my other neighbours. During that week, the crow was seen carrying pieces of thermocol, dried-fallen-off leaves, tattered pink-white bus tickets, shreds of MTNL bills, cotton bolls floating in April air, all the possibilities of universe familiarising a home in that half open beak. Crows rushed in and rushed out.
In this part of New Delhi crows summon us to stop and look at them. In this part of New Delhi, just kilometers away from all the digging up and ‘renovation’ and ‘redevelopment’ being done for a new parliament and office buildings. In this part of New Delhi, which has been listening to all the trucks and trollies being pulled for the Pragati Maidan corridor.
When years ago, Baker, Lutyens, Hardinge, Irving, were looking for appropriate tracks to transform Delhi (once again) and design a New Delhi, they saw bucks, baboons, monkeys, jackals, hare and porcupine here, in this part of New Delhi. Much of the space north, south, east of Shahjahanabad was wild and rugged. But on such terraces, where crows carry bills of yesteryear to make home, why are we costing them familiarity? Are we billing them for having homes on trees?
It is not that I am really recognizing each of the crows in my colony. I am recognising each and every piece of space that these crows are inhabiting. It is not the sound of their caw I am memorizing, it is the intensity with which they call out, that is being registered here, from the crown of these trees to the public space on roads. There is a beat missing and also sticking. A different flock of crows from Chamba may fly in here tomorrow and sit on the Mango tree. I will still recognize their minute movement. I will still register a crow’s rattle, a whole range of voices when the crow is plunged in deep cleaning itself. It is not the crows I am seeing; It is a space, a sharing of too many movements with a space that comes alive with crows.
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Remember, how crows remember bills of such Delhi. Carrying it half clutched in their beak, outlined in red-green-yellow, softened by water kept on rooftops, these parchments are dried by the monsoon wind of Oceans; on such boundaries of cream-yellow houses, these MTNL bills stop by and listen to barricades becoming a constant on Margs; on such crowns of Mango trees, these bills pat the last genome of trees that will be not be sequenced or preserved, because familiarity is not afforded Museums. No replantation drives for such proximity.
Around such blue skies of Delhi, crows remember another Ahmed Ali’s description of Dilli and perhaps don’t offer a caw. caw. caw. They mix their wings’ upbeat swipe with koel’s delight and go on. On ubiquitous green direction boards with white outline of ‘Welcome To NDMC Area’, crows fly with a constant acceleration and talk with NH-3 flyover about Andamans' depth of life which people fail to consider. Then, taking on such parchments from Delhi, crows relax their bowel movement.
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I like to believe crows are the only artists in the world who write with dust and a 'continuity of being present'. They herald a kind of past when flying to mango trees. The future is a sprinkle of shine on their wings. They keep picking bugs from under their feathers and they keep their head ruffled when it rains. All day they work out MCQs from NSEW directions. They marigold for the winter in North. They see the forts and breathe the Very Poisonous levels of smog when the city locks in a lockdown. They drink water.
When they dissolve white-bread they carry from neighbourhood in this water bowl I keep, mynahs don’t bother with the mess created. They pick and flick while other birds go from plant to plant kept in pots to look for grains. Crows fist with pieces of roti leaping on the edges of cream-yellow houses, they fly into the garden downstairs, and bind all these particles together
May be crows dissolve uncertainties.
