Two Birds

There was a time when I fed puffed rice to a bunch of squirrels. These tiny creatures were a lot of fun. I truly loved feeding them.

 

It started out of pity and soon became an enchanting habit. They used to wait for me or my brother to give them food. They ignored the rest of the people of the household. The very moment they saw any one of us two coming out to the verandah they used to inform us of their hunger by scurrying down from the trees. Ignoring them resulted in their invading our rooms.

 

While feeding them two birds became my bravest guests. A doyel and a water bird, we call them pankouri in Bengali. These are small, black coloured birds with long legs and they eat fishes and water insects or creatures. This bird’s courage was beyond words. I used two rooms. The room attached to verandah was my bedroom and the inner room was my kitchen. If his (or her) food was not served on time he used to invade my inner room, after crossing the outer room. It was amusing, touching and a little scary. Human beings should never be trusted that much.

 

The second one was a piece of courage too. I love gardening, I am not even a mediocre gardener but I love to work in garden. So I used to spend hours in garden, tilling the soil  or cleaning of weeds, he used to be my almost constant companion, sitting squarely a few inches apart from me, waiting eagerly for any insect to jump out of the weeds or ground.

 

Wherever I go, whatever I do I will never forget these two birds.