Unveiling a Painful Memory

My childhood is mostly a blur, or perhaps it is carefully veiled to hide some painful incidents that my younger self didn't want to confront. There are layers and layers of dense fog, and penetrating these layers, even now, is difficult. Often, I am waylaid by my own thoughts and never really approach The Fog.

 

Lately, I often think back to a specific incident that seems to have emerged from that fog, presenting itself to me. I keep thinking that I must delve into it and articulate my thoughts, as it may be the seed for one of my current behaviour patterns. As usual, life gets in the way, and I keep putting it off.

 

However, here I am, trying to get back to writing and other creative projects when I am not hijacked by distractions. It's funny how I miss "those days" when I did something creative (for example, the previous articles written in this very blog) and don't do anything to get back to that space. Instead, I blame myself for spending time doing mostly nothing (work set aside). Anyway, I am rambling and putting off telling the actual story!

 

Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Maniya. She was five years old and an only child. She went to playschool, often got into fights with other children, and would come home to tell her mother how Varsha and Anshu bullied and hit her. Her mother would advise her to hit back and tell the teacher. Such incidents mostly dotted Maniya's playschool and primary years.

 

Maniya's mother was a stay-at-home mom, busy with household chores and cooking, yet she always found time to play with her daughter. Her father was a high-flying advertising professional who mostly came home at midnight when she was already asleep. While Maniya's father doted on her and gave her many presents, communication with him was almost non-existent, except for when they went on elaborate family vacations or had meals together.

 

Due to these circumstances, Maniya was a lonely child without many friends. Her parents noticed this and thought of getting her a pet to keep her happy and engaged. a large pet in a smallish house would be inconvenient so it came down to birds as the pets of choice. The idea of a parrot did not enthuse Maniya, but she showed interest in small birds called 'Muniya' and there were also her namesakes, six birds in a cage were purchased, and the shaded verandah in Maniya's house became their new home.

 

The birds were lively, chirping all day and sleeping with their heads tucked inside their wings at night. They would flit around, perch on Maniya's fingers, eat millet grains, and take sips of water. Maniya spent hours playing with the birds, watching them, and refilling their food and water. Her parents saw a gradual change, as Maniya evolved into a happier, more engaged child.

 

This was the pre technology age so children back then may have believed in wonder and magic and other fantasies. One day when Maniya was in primary school and just started learning Math which she did not like that much, she took it upon herself to teach Math to the birds so that the birds might help her with all the tiresome homework. She laid out all the equipment before the cage, a textbook, some blank sheets of paper, pencils, and matchsticks and in all earnest started teaching the birds addition and subtraction!

 

While this was going on, her elder cousin came to visit. Seeing this elaborate spectacle, she burst into peals of laughter along with Maniya's mother. Even after many years this incident is always remembered, and we all have a good laugh now.

 

But back then, Maniya was not at all pleased due to two reasons, first, the laughter interrupted the lesson and second, she thought adults to be weird as she absolutely believed that birds could be taught! As a result, the lesson was abandoned, and she threw a tantrum and cried rivers as the giggles continued. From that day on, bird education was abandoned, instead Maniya would hold her fingers inside the cage and the birds would hop on and off her fingers and the days passed like this quite uneventfully for a year or so.

 

The scorching heat of summer often became unbearable. Maniya wondered if the birds felt the heat as intensely as she did, so she often gave them a shower under the kitchen tap, enjoying watching them flutter their feathers and dry themselves. She wished she could open the cage and pet them more. In one such attempt, one bird flew away, much to her dismay.

 

On another intensely hot day, she decided another shower was in order. She took the cage under the kitchen tap and let the water run while she went to wash her face. She didn't notice that some vegetable peels had clogged the sink. She took her time and forgot she had left the birds with the tap running. When she remembered, she ran back to find her beloved birds had drowned in the kitchen sink. The cage, now full of five silent birds, was eerily quiet.

 

This was a catastrophic event in Maniya's life, where the birds under her care lost their lives because she was careless, her mother was sleeping during that incident and her father was away at work. For her it really felt like the end of the world, and it was as if nothing would be the same again, there were continued days of grief and tears, a burial for the birds was arranged in the garden and new birds were purchased as a replacement. She tried very hard to love them as much as her previous Muniyas, but it wasn’t the same. 

 

Maniya's mother fed the birds and gave them water and tried to engage her daughter in pet care, but she would not participate and would drown herself in her newfound passion, books. Having some caged birds chirping away seemed pointless and a constant reminder of the drowning incident. One day, her mother suggested that the birds be set free, and the cage door was opened.

 

It was curious that when the cage was opened, the birds did not come out, in fact they remained for a long time, Maniya coaxed and cajoled the birds towards the opening, some came out and were perplexed about where to go and perched on the grille for a while. It was almost evening when they all flew away, and the cage discarded.

 

Maniya never had a pet again and never thought of those birds until now...