Little Sparrow On The Tree

When I was a little girl, I always wanted to be with my grandmother as she was always making goodies for us to eat and telling us stories and shlokas every time we met her.

One such story she told me was that of a little sparrow who sat on a tree near her house and had made it her home. This sparrow visited us on our house balcony whenever my grandmom used to remove the dirt from the rice she had got from her farmland in her village. The sparrow used to pick at the bits of rice in the dirt and not be afraid of us sitting around. I guess she had a sense that we will not harm her.

My grandmom used to say that the sparrow had little babies in her nest in the rain tree with branches coming over our house. She used to tell that the bird took the rice to her babies to feed them and make them grow as she was giving her food for us to grow. We used to ask our grandmom how the nest looked and how the babies looked. She used to describe it to us and sometimes show a nest on the tree if we could view it from our balcony. This was the time when there was no Google to show us photos and videos of birds, their nests, etc. She used to say that during the Pongal festival, the sparrows and crows got married. This was an interesting piece of information we wanted to hear every time she told the story even though we heard it a million times.

These instances were a lot of fun watching these little chirping birds hovering over our house and coming close to us having a meal for themselves and their children. The sad part is that as the place around my grand mom's house got busier and busier, these sparrows also slowly started disappearing and now there are none left in that area - may be due to the electric lines and mobile towers nearby or the food for them has reduced.

Wishing that we grow our cities more mindful of the other creatures around us and not the haphazard expansion happening all around Bengaluru.