Finally, I decided to move into my own flat that I had bought and rented out six years ago. Recently my tenants, a lovely young couple, expressed their wish to shift into their own house. So I decided to use the opportunity to experience living in my own flat.
I moved in two weeks ago. Friends and family joined the prayers. Everyone congratulated me on my house and told me how beautiful it was.
It took a couple of days for their compliments to sink in. They were right, I realised. This was the first time l was living in a house where l didn’t have to switch on the lights during day-time. It was a bright house with lots of sunlight and breeze. I began to savour the experience.
Perfection is not easy to bear. As in the story of the potter who made a Nataraja so perfect that he had to break a bit of its little finger lest it dance wildly and take the world into chaos. So with my house.
Suddenly I noticed lots of activity in my balcony with pigeons sitting on the parapet littering every possible empty space. I was horrified. Pigeon poo could be a source of infection and pollute the air. You can contract serious diseases.
The society where I had lived earlier didn’t have this menace. I learnt from my tenant that some pigeon-lovers had come to live in this complex and were daily feeding grain to the birds.
“What?” l exclaimed. “But pigeons are so filthy!” All that romantic nonsense about pigeons being carriers of love epistles between Emperor Jahangir and Begum Nur Jahan was so wrong. Pigeons are the dirtiest birds to keep as pets.
I declared war on them. A friend suggested I buy an owl bird-scarer on Amazon. I found one for ₹705 and another ₹373. Which was better? I read reviews. ‘Nothing works,’ they said. ‘After a while the pigeons realise the owl is stationary and come back to make a mark on its head as well’. Another site showed a blue and white owl with a moving stick. This, the reviewer said, was better.
I nearly placed an order when it struck me that I should also check some YouTube videos. And sure enough there was one in which an intelligent Indian housewife’s solution was to tie a black garbage bag in the balcony or window. As it flutters in the wind, the birds stay away.
So I have done that and let me tell you how well it has worked. At a cost of a mere one rupee, I have sent all the pigeons to the last building in the Society. I can see some one thousand of them perched atop one building and another 500 on an electric wire, looking towards my balcony but not quite venturing close. I was happy the experiment had succeeded.
My happiness lasted a week, till I found a crow sitting on the balcony wall and pecking at the garbage bag. This was too much! How audacious too!
So once again I went to YouTube to check if there was a crow-scarer. In the second video, an American lady harassed by crows in her garden had proposed keeping a CD with its bright side up tied to a pole, for the crow fears the sunlight reflecting off it.
I have done that now. A crow came yesterday to examine the CD, and a second one came today. Both stood timorously on the edge of the balcony wall – not centre stage – and kept observing it. Then they flew away.
I am keeping my fingers crossed. Will they leave my building forever or will they go tattle to the pigeons the truth about the “menacing creatures” I have hung on my balcony. Crows are very intelligent birds and hard to fool.
It would be a nightmare if the army of pigeons and crows returned to take revenge. What if they returned to sit, not on the pole or the other building, but on my balcony. splattering their… you know what. Will I have to shift flats?
I did think of being cautious and adopting a pseudonym for this piece, lest I have pigeons and crows cawing angrily from the balcony, and my pigeon-loving neighbours screaming at me from the front door.
ceogiit@gmail.com