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Unlike my best friend who has can give you an almost complete, day by day, blow by blow account of her entire childhood, I remember precious few things of my first six years. One thing i do remember though, with painful clarity, is really seriously wondering why my teacher had marked the hind legs of the parakeet i had just drawn as ‘My Favourite Bird’ and written a huge ‘X’ next to it, and not the usual ‘V good’. When i argued that i had definitely seen parakeets on the tree in front of my window and they definitely had four legs because how else did they do the acrobatics they did, she just gave up after a while and told me to call my sister, who was in the same school during the small break. That’s some trauma all right. i can easily remember being thoroughly confused, didn’t birds have four legs, or maybe just the parakeets? didnt all parakeets look like crocodiles actually? how else did those buggers balance on swaying branches and walk around. walk and hang upside down.

today whenever i see the parakeets and oh boy i see them everyday, just heard one squawking while flying past me right now. so whenever i see them i grumble at them. you can’t blame a tiny, innocent, wonderstruck child for thinking they have extraordinary balancing powers. I mean, look at this fellow right now, wings tucked away neatly, beak holding on to the twig ahead of him casually, like so, just so he can walk past this little bump on the branch, and then he saunters along the length of a thick branch of this almond tree. Now, he surveys the junction of the next branch, turns around and walks all the way back, and climbs to the branch above and walks some more. What’s with the walking i ask them everyday, you can fly you know? they are mischievous buggers, I’m sure they hear me and know exactly what I’m saying, because they have that grin, but they walk away and walk some more.

now he is hanging upside down for no particular reason, casually biting at a small almond that has no chance of growing to its potential now. and there it goes, after some intense gnawing he has grown bored with the almond and lightly yanks it off the the tree and tosses it away, where it bounces sadly on the ground joining several others from the same branch.

such wasteful, pretty, squawking walking buggers.

I almost never remember that I live on an island, really close to the sea. I’m about 600 meters from the sea and it’s definitely making its presence felt right now, in the lull between incessant rains, with the wind it’s throwing towards me thankfully (cooling my cup of tea because i need to rush). There’s a cacophony of bird calls in the air, the crows sound annoyed, there’s a barbet, a mynah squawks indignantly as it takes flight, it’s soaked to the bones. The kites are trying to do their wheeling in the air thing, but no, the wind is too strong, they’re being buffeted here and there, and most give up in a couple of minutes. The grey clouds are shifting across the sky, gliding smoothly, but I can see the heavier clouds are just staying put, and if anything, getting more menacing by the minute.

When i think about wildlife, i think about all of this. The weather first because its place in the life cycle of the animal, bird, tree I’m observing then makes more sense. I’ve always been a weather girl (I very very briefly flirted with the idea of being that but it was too much work to figure out how to get there, when i was cosy and snug in my literature class, a beautiful 25 minute walk from home).

What’s on my mind now is this lovely bouquet of red in front of me, the gulmohar tree. It annoys me that every year, the rains arrive just when this fellow has put forth this almost complete crown of red gorgeous flowers and I know that the petals will be on the ground now, shaken off with the wind and the rain, and people and vehicles will be trampling all over this. Why can’t you make most of the summer, i always yell at this fellow, why waste your crown on the rain, argh! But no, he seems to know what he is doing. Although i wish I knew what he plans to do with all these buds when the wind is pushing through every single branch and the parakeets are all hiding and won’t be coming over to walk along the entire tree and snip stuff here and there. Was that your plan tree? the parakeets? oh boy.

The wind is stopping now, it feels like it will start pouring any minute. I can rely on the crows to give me the warning, when they get quiet I know it’s too late to dash across the street to get to where i need to be.

There’s muted lightning bolts shuttering the clouds. The hiss and rumble of heavy tires on the street below me bring me back to my reality. The tea is too cold. Ah well.