Hungry Hungry

Have you seen baby sparrows eat? They eat as if their lives depended on it, and so it must. If you ever have the opportunity to see these little tufts of feather, notice that, these creatures make sure that their tiny beaks are never empty. I can imagine the plight of the parent birds, because I elected myself parent of one such speck.
Every year, the monsoons come like an ominous wave of destruction, and sweep away everything in its path. While some enjoy the showers, others detest it. Grey skies and howling winds accompanied by lashing rain are the characteristic features of the monsoons in the mountains of Mussoorie. More often than not, one comes across fallen branches and nests with dead birds in them. On one stormy day, I almost stepped on a small lump on the ground. Had I not detected the insignificant movement, I would have probably squashed the poor mite under my foot.
On close inspection, I saw a pink, featherless, and very ugly baby sparrow. (Correction. I did not know that it was a sparrow till much later.) More out of curiosity than love, I, gingerly, caught the bird by one wing, between my thumb and forefinger, and held it up for further scrutiny. It made feeble attempts, at what I thought was, defence by straining its puny head to peck at my trespassing fingers. Its beak did not reach me and after a while it just gave up and retired to its fate and so I did not get pecked. Encouraged by the forced docility of the chick, I decided to keep it and look after it because the creature looked cold and, obviously, did not have a home anymore. The first thing I learnt about birds was that they had enormous appetites and lightening fast metabolism and in all my limited knowledge of parenting, I set out to mother this impossibly, hungry bird.
A bird is one thing, but how many of us actually, feel like we are nurturing peculiar ‘hungry’ expectants? How many of us are, relevantly, aware of these wolves that are eating into our existences? We would never agree that we are passive targets for active exploiting elements that function at various levels in our lives and the lives of others around us. The hitch lies in the identification of these elements. While some of us accept their presence, some of us live in denial. We, conveniently, delude ourselves and start believing that life, as we live it, is perfect. We find ourselves, constantly, adopting concepts and attitudes that feed on our sense of belonging, which corrode our reasoning of right and wrong. We go against nature and pick up little habits and quirks on the way and let them feed on our way of life to a point where they become a part of life itself. Drinking, smoking or doing drugs may start out as experiments and while some leave it at that, some incorporate it into their lifestyles. Innocent curiosity, may eventually, lead to guilty addictions which at first seem harmless but, once indulged in indiscriminately, become lethal consequences.
Feeding the foster avian was a thankless job. The bird wanted food every ten to fifteen minutes and just when I thought that I was done feeding the bird, it would let out a long mournful chirp followed by frantic, ear drum splitting, and shrill noises which I never knew sparrows had the ability to make. Then its body would break out into spasms and the spasms would flow out of the body in the form of bird excreta. The grey mass would settle in the tissue paper that I had used to line the box in which I kept the bird, and that would call for a change in the interior decoration. This exercise took place, once, every hour, during the day and the only time when I was not feeding or cleaning was at night when the little thing would snuggle into the crook of my neck and sleep and that was the only time that my ward was not in the box. With its constant demands for food it is no wonder that I decided to name the bird ‘Hungry’.
The feeling of not being able to get away from something is not an, altogether, alien one. There is one thing or another that we want to get away from but are bound by the way we project our personalities or by the way we expect others to. These things are like that hungry little bird that demands your, undivided, attention, and the more you give into it the more they become a part of you. We create barriers in our minds about people. We divide them into socially acceptable or socially not acceptable on the same lines on which we were judged ourselves. There are three categories of people in this day and age, the privileged, the underprivileged and the unprivileged. If we were to split hairs, we could safely say that no one, no matter what they say or do, completely, belongs to one particular category. Making ourselves believe that we are a better sort of people than the rest, has us feeding the hunger of undue attention and importance. But when we want to get out of the manner of doing things in a particular way we are shackled by our own commitments to social arrogance.
The little ugly, pink thing had sprouted soft, white and brown feathers after a while and had stopped looking quite so ugly. In fact it looked quite cute. With me having taken up maternal duties and with Hungry having accepted me as its mother, we had built our lives around each other. To be precise, I had built mine around Hungry’s. After such a long time, curiosity had turned into attachment and just like any pet becomes a member of the family, Hungry had become a part of mine. If anything was to be done it was done with Hungry in mind and, although, I had gotten used to the bird’s demands, I was finding it difficult to cope with the way it was changing. Hungry was not a docile little chick anymore, in fact I was having trouble confining it to its box. It had become quite spirited and had a mind of its own. It hopped around at will and pecked at everything. I was scared that it might get hurt or get lost or get into trouble or get me into trouble. I did not have the heart to cage it nor was I willing to let it saunter around on its own. How long could I hold on to Hungry before he was to fly away? Hungry was growing up.
Sometimes, the hungry elements in our lives tend to get out of control. They may have seemed to help somewhere along the way, but really, all they did was aggravate the situation. Constant pestering by parents may push one child, or two children to get better grades, once, twice, thrice, and maybe throughout their academic career. But let us not forget that many parents have lost their children to grades. The hunger for being at the top may not always be fed instead it may lead to dire consequences.
Soon it was time for me to let go of Hungry. I had been letting him fly off to the nearby trees. Hungry would be gone for a few minutes and then be back. Soon it had taken to staying out late, but it would always return before sun down. I was reluctant but determined to let it be where it was meant to be. I know I could not give it any ‘birdly’ advice neither did it have a birdlike upbringing. To let it go seemed like the hardest thing for me to do. I might have even wept a little on the eve of letting Hungry fly away for good, but to let go was something I had to do. Then one day Hungry flew off and never returned. I was hoping that it had found a mate and had made a nest and was ready to incubate eggs. I wasn’t sure whether Hungry would be a mommy or a daddy. All I knew was that whatever it was it was not going to be good at being it.
Letting go of ingrained habits is the hardest thing to do, especially, when they are the wrong ones, those that have been unnaturally incorporated into our lives by external influences. But getting rid of them is essentially important, and the best way to get rid of them is to stop feeding them. When we continue to let these elements dictate our behaviour and how we feel we end up in a mess that we need to constantly clean up. Being able to maintain a certain level of peace of mind is a difficult task. There will always be some hungry state of mind eating away at our patience and peace. Trying to keep that condition at bay is one thing and to eliminate it, another. The stronger our conviction the better able we are to deal with such situations.
These ‘hungry’ expectants are not as trivial as a baby sparrow. The intensity of their damage is beyond measure and cure. We all have our little birds, making us uncomfortable, and making us stray from the more important things in life. The idea is not to control them, but to let go of them, so that our existence, and the existence of those around us is less cumbersome.