The Case of Missing Sparrows

“Una hirundo non facit ver”, that is Latin for “One swallow does not a
summer make!”, I am sure you must have read of this maxim somewhere.
But in Nilgiris, it is not just one sparrow, there are scores of them
here chirping, hopping about like a lark. I wonder if you all have
noticed this avian creature in and around your household, in the garden,
perched on the trees, lurking about, picking on the worms early
mornings. This little bird is almost on the verge of extinction in most
of the Northern India. When I spotted them here in Wellington, I was
naturally overjoyed, as there are very happy and nostalgic memories
associated with these little angels from our childhood. Those were the
days, is it sounding clichéd or I am sounding like an old man, may be,
but yes it has been quite some time back, when we spotted them
everywhere, in fact their nests were very much a part of every
household. At times the older generation would clean up the place, the
twigs would be removed, and we would get a glimpse of the little
nestling young ones with their beaks appearing rather gigantic as
compared to their fledgling torso if you can call the rest of it so.
Their feathers were treasured and kept hidden within the folds of our
books.

The memories are vivid as the grannies would recount
stories of the sparrow, in which the female of the species would always
turn out to be very naughty and wicked feigning sickness; tricking the
poor male into doing the difficult chores related to cooking and she
would just simply polish it off for the poor old sod to do the cleaning
up act. I often wondered as to why was the female of the species
depicted in that manner by the grannies, whereas in actual fact, we grew
up watching them always embroiled in the household chores themselves.
Was it because they secretly desired to take their “bitter” halves for
such a ride, this was their notion of revenge? Or it relates to our
collective psyche where we have not yet forgiven Kaikeyi for that
scheming act of exiling Lord Rama! Yes it is true even today, the
mother-in-law continues to be reviled and sometimes I feel they just
have to act the part, even if they do not wish to, just to fulfil the
expectations from them, else they would lose relevance.

But I have
digressed, today I am writing about the sparrows. Yes, I have another
association with them, being a Signal officer; we are referred to as
Sparrows, so there is a sort of brotherhood which we share with this
“feathered biped”. Since they were inseparable with the urban and rural
households alike, I presume, the Signal officer, similarly inseparable
from the formation HQ, makes this appointment code quite apt. Not all
the appointment codes would satisfy that description though, as rabbits
can in no way be associated with the supplies as they consume endlessly
rather than supply or for that matter, the eagle for the repair and
recovery.

The house sparrow is commonly called “gauraiya” in the
vernacular, but its scientific name is “Passer domesticus”. Dr Salim Ali
has described them as, “A confirmed hanger-on of man, in hills and
plains alike. They are omnivorous; eat grains, insects, fruit buds,
flower nectar or kitchen scraps”, so how is it that they decided to do
the disappearing act. Without one realising it, slowly they have just
faded away from the urban areas and also our memories. We have been too
busy catching up with the Joneses (or should I say Gandhis and Patels!)
to even notice. There is some semblance of awareness of the extinction
of Tigers, Rhinos, Turtles and even Great Indian Bustard, but sparrow
being so insignificant that it is gradually fading into oblivion without
the Manekas and their ilk even registering it. The litterateurs have
also referred to them quite frequently; a few examples need to be quoted
just to elucidate their importance. The Greek poet Sappho, in her “Hymn
to Aphrodite”, pictures the goddess’s chariot as drawn by sparrows. The
Roman poet Catullus addresses one of his odes to his lover Lesbia’s pet
sparrow (‘Passer, deliciae meae puellae…’), and writes an elegy on
its death (‘Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque…’). In the New Testament,
Jesus reassures his followers that not even a sparrow can fall without
God’s notice, (Luke 12:6; Matthew 10:29). In Hamlet, by William
Shakespeare, as Hamlet faces his tragic fate, he says, “There’s a
special providence in the fall of a sparrow”, presumably referring to
the New Testament quotation shown above. In the Redwall series of
fantasy novels, sparrows are portrayed as fierce fighters; the main
sparrow character is Warbeak. Wow this was news to me as well!

So
what could be the reason for this omnipresent friend of the Homo
sapiens ditching us elsewhere, but continuing their association here in
the salubrious environs of the “Blue Hills”? I have been wondering, and
then it dawned on me, that one of the major differences in our homes
here and elsewhere is the absence of a ceiling fan! The ceiling fans
have mushroomed over the years, with the mercury zooming in the summer
months. Yes, they have become ubiquitous and are as much a necessity as
water. But there were times which many of our generation recall rather
fondly when places such as Pune, Dehradun, Bangalore and even my native
place Indore could boast of houses without provisions for a ceiling fan.
In fact I distinctly recall, we purchased our first ceiling fan a small
42” Usha in 1974 and it was a luxury to enjoy the privilege of the
divine flow of wind on a sweltering hot summer afternoon with
temperatures nearing 36 deg Celsius. Amusing, isn’t it, today the
mercury zooms past the 40 in early March itself. I wonder, whether this
has added to the woes of this bird, as the other common reasons are
quite universal in nature, the growing menace of pesticides and the
modern architecture not being conducive for their habitat.

So
nature lovers behold them; it is just a reminder to register their
presence as you would miss them back in the plains. Do make it a point
to identify them to the tiny tots and they will treasure this memory
forever, may be this would be an incentive for some of them to return to
the Nilgiris later in life.