March 20th: The Sparrow-Day!
When I read about The Sparrow-Day a couple of weeks ago suddenly I realised that nests created for them in my house were missing for over a few months.
We had hung one each in each of the balcony of our bedrooms hosting them since over a decade. All of them were stripped during civil maintenance work of our buildings. I was wondering how come all of us at home forgot to put back their homes.
In the barrack kind of buildings (called as chawls in Mumbai) where I was brought up, almost every alternate week there used to be a wedding or a naming ceremony.
Common area between the two rows of the tenements (each being just about 10x10 feet in size) would get crowded with so many activities including children doing their homework to running tiny businesses such as assembling a safety-pin. Among them one would find a typical mother (self employed on assembly line) feeding it's crying child by her side.
"One bite for the Sparrow, one for the Crow", she would rhyme¹ expecting the child to get pacified. The child would eagerly look around trying to locate sparrows.
We could actually see the sparrows dancing around while crows playing their own mischief. In fact we used to maintain wooden nests for the sparrows to breed. So many sparrows would gather around and chirp making the mornings sound beautiful. Toddlers would love to go after them.
Apart from their entertainment value they would play their role in sustaining ecology.
Where have all of them gone?
Modern cities are actually on the verge of making them extinct. Concrete buildings make it difficult for then to make nests. Concretised and dirty surroundings don't allow them to find grains, nor allow them a dust-bath.
What's the solution?
The least we can do is to make up for our mistakes. I made it up by putting back their homes moment I realised my mistake a couple of weeks ago.
It's very simple. Hanging a plastic bag with some padding inside is enough. Sparrows would do the rest.
I also put back a couple of pots full of garden soil so that they could take dust-bath.
Within a couple of days, a couple each in each of the balcony had already finished survey of their prospective homes. To my luck, within another day they moved in lock-stock-and-barrel.
No Advance, No Deposit, No Rent for (their) homes in a city like Mumbai in exchange of an 'Unwritten-Agreement' by sparrows to entertain and help sustain ecology!!
That was a small beginning again, a small difference I had expected from myself by the day of the Sparrow-Day today. Now not only March 20th but for me and my family every-day is a: Happy-Sparrow-Morning wake-up call and a
Happy Sparrow-Day!!!
A ©MaiKu poem on this:
एक घास काऊचा, एक चिऊचा
मोठया घासाचा ध्यास, हाच मोठा विषय चिंतेचा
फरक पडेच 'पड़णा-यास' त्याचा
Footnote-1,
¹In Marathi language the wordings are
एक घास चिऊचा, एक काऊचा ! Read above a ©MaiKu on this.
©MaiKu Is My-Haiku
Freely ideate it's poetic rhymes
Any objective topic it chimes
Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder:
WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling
Wish To Be Planet-Friendly?: Save !
Soon-waste-to-eat, Sea-to-drink !
Do You Celebrate Mean-or-Green
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