Tale of Two Parrots

     It’s lunch time at Kalaikunda or KKD as it’s more commonly known,I got a call in Office from my friend Bala asking  if I have any fruits at home. In Armed Forces Bachelors  have the freedom to turn up  any time at your home and ask for food/drinks. Bala had picked up an injured parrot and wanted something to feed her. 

     By evening the injured parrot was at my home. Vidya , my wife nursed the injured parrot and pretty soon it became friendly with us and was  a part of our family. It was on the dining table with us whenever we were having food, and on the bedside table in the night. After some days when we thought the Parrot was good to fly we let her out. But her injured legs couldn’t take weight and also it could only fly around freely in our bungalow only which had a high roof and ventilators.

   In a couple of months time my transfer order came. As we packed our luggage we didn’t know what to do with the Parrot or Meetu as we called her now. Many colleagues started asking if we could give the parrot to them. Somehow we couldn’t  think about doing that.

      The day of my farewell from KKD, I was still finishing my packing when Meetu started making lots of noise. Inspite of  both of us trying to comfort her, Meetu kept making lot of noise and went and sat onto a ventilator in the drawing hall. Till now we had never bothered about the ceiling fan being kept on when Meetu was  with us. 

    I took a stick and tried to move her away from the ventilator. She got up and flew straight into the ceiling fan and dropped onto the floor. Not a drop of blood was there in the lifeless body. Both of us were unconsolable and  we wept for a long time. I dug a small pit in our backyard and buried our beloved Meetu there. Somehow we managed to attend our  evening farewell party, and after a couple of days  we moved to Bidar , my new place of work. 

        In 2014 I was again transferred to Kalaikunda. Gudiya my wifes maid from our first tenure at KKD came to meet us in our new home. In her hand there was a just born parrot,with barely any feathers , our Meetu was back with us.

      

      After few months of feeding and caring  Meetu grew up as a naughty parrot. Only later we realised that it was a male parrot. His favourite things were to chew on my shoe laces , sit on my shoulder and bite my ear lobes. We used to leave him in a cage in our garden. And pretty soon he was good at mimicking voices of  Crow, Mynas and some other birds which we are yet to find out.

      When about a year old I decided to release the parrot into the open. Though my entire family was against it , I didn’t have the heart to bear the grief of loosing one more pet again. As I came out of the house with Meetu sitting on my shoulder, our maid Gudiya said that Meetu will not fly away as it has become very close to us. After seeing the open area outside Meetu flew up from my shoulder and went and sat onto Mango tree in our garden for a moment before flying away into the open blue sky.I was relieved and happy but wifey and kids were gloomy.

 

       A couple of days after Meetu had flown away, when I came back home for lunch my younger daughter rushed out and  said in excitement Acha see who has come..!!! I was mulling over  as to which relative of mine had turned up this far away. I saw Meetu was back with his usual whistling. He was so hungry that he finished off two apples in one go.

      We didn’t realise that Meetu hadn’t done any foraging till now. After leaving us  he got hungry and went near to the servants quarters in our campus.The servants caught hold of him. The news of whistling parrot spread around the campus. Our maid got to know of the whistling parrot and she got back Meetu to us.

   In a couple of years Meetu developed black and red ring around the neck indicating that Meetu was a male parrot. After Meetu was approx three years old my transfer came to Bangalore. Again the same question how do we take Meetu along with us. Our maid was expecting we will be leaving Meetu with them.I decided we will drive down to Bangalore, a distance of approximately 1800km in our car taking Meetu along.But we were worried how will Meetu handle the four day journey in a car.

        All our doubts went away as he got used to the Car ride in a couple of hours and after that he was happily whistling away throughout the journey.