Polly

I once owned a parrot. It was not named by me, but for some strange reason, it came to be known as Polly. Polly the parrot. Were I to name it today, it would have been named something extraordinary, like Mr. Finch or Dilbert. Also, were I to own it today, it might have died a stranger death than just having it's neck caught in the metal wiring of it's cage. It might have died serenading by moonlight, maybe tap-dancing drunk outside the window of my great-grandmother. It might even have been a trained talker that met it's maker yelling at the construction workers who always seemed to have some building or cementing or tapping or hammering to do downstairs by the tank in the backyard. In both cases, I'm pretty sure it would have been shot to death by my great-grandmum, let's call her Petunia as I don't seem to be able to recall her name, who wasn't known for her patience or tolerance of loud noises. But Polly, as it is widely remembered by everyone barring me, was not a talker.

Polly was not one of a kind. The common parrot you often see perched on the branch of a guava tree in an old garden might be the reincarnated spirit of Polly. For Polly wasn't a great parrot and would not have gone down in bird-history as having done anything special. If you believe in Karma and rebirth, a parrot is a parrot and is incapable of doing anything worthwhile to deserve an exaltation into primate-hood. She was green and couldn't change her colour, she had a red beak that wouldn't speak, she had a red line down the back of her neck that would seep blood the day I found her strangled and limp in her cage on our terrace.

-'You're hungry, aren't you?' I asked, as I stroked the top of her head, and looked gleefully upon the otherwise energetic bird.

Her tongue was hanging out and it was obvious she was thirsty. The cup of water languishing in the corner of her cage had run dry and it bothered me that Buladi had not the time to replenish it. Buladi did not give advice on sex, not that I needed any, for I was six, but she always had a word of praise for her beloved Tuku and a soft reprimand at the ready when Tuku wouldn't brush his teeth or eat his lunch and a surprisingly zealous barrage of profanity for the Basti kids who scaled our wall from time to time to find their cricket balls that were unwittingly hit into our garden. She was the proverbial maid-servant of old, always at the beck and call of my grandmum, whether it was to dole out porotas or to put back in order the room of my aunt who never had the time to settle her own vast collection of books and term-papers. As a result she often had to suffer a terrible rebuke from my grandmum for whom the porotas were never soft enough and from my aunt for having misplaced a pile of extremely important term-papers she was supposed to correct. But Buladi, being Buladi, bore it with an ingratiating air of obsequiousness.

-'Eke jol dao ni keno?' I demanded of her, when she was summoned.
She looked contemplative. It didn't make sense. Buladi was not supposed to look contemplative. I tried looking contemplative. I couldn't.
-'She has moved on to a better place,' she replied in bengali.
-'Where there's water?'
-'Yes'
I looked dejected.
-'But birds can't swim in water-'
-'Have you ever seen a bird not swimming in water?'
-'No-'
-'Polly is an excellent swimmer. She used to win medals for swimming just like Golu dada.'
-'Wow!' I exclaimed, my eyes wide open with wonder. 'Can she pick her nose too like Golu dada does?'
-'She can too' she said with a calm air of quiet omniscience.

Her reasons were impeccable as always. It's why I listened to her. When she asked me not to peer into the tank coz there were crocodiles there, I followed her instructions. Did Ram da not have a scar on his stomach from when he wrestled the crocodile in the tank? When she asked me not to squish the caterpillars in the garden, I listened to her. Did they not keep the trees from coming alive at night?

-'But why won't she budge?' I asked as I prodded the bird with my finger.
-'It's coz she's moved on to a better place,' she said.
-'But she's right here!' I cried, unable to understand.
-'It's like when Ram da goes to fight the Bhanu monster at night. Do you ever see him leave the house?'
-'No'
-'Exactly'

Ram da was her husband. He had been the servant assigned to my grandfather, a civil engineer from the army. He was a Nepali by birth and as stubborn and stocky as they come. Had he lived at anywhere else in the country, his name would have been Bahadur. But as he chose to be a loyal servant to our Bengali household, he was called Ram. Had I taken a moment to consider it, Ram da was too wiry now and lacked the physical prowess to fight any monster, but they said he was a war veteran and I believed them coz they said so.

-'Buladi, will you teach Polly to talk?' I asked, hopefully.
-'Sure,' she agreed. 'But when parrots learn to talk, they forget how to fly'
-'That's not true,'I said, unconvinced. 'Rintu had a macaw that could talk, but then flew away one day when the cage was open.'
-'That's not true. Rintu is an idiot. He used to feed his bird ice-cream, and it's common knowledge that too much ice-cream makes you lose the ability to speak. Which is why his macaw learnt to fly again.'
-'But ice-cream doesn't make me forget how to speak!' I protested.
-'Doesn't it make your throat hurt?'
-'Yes-'
-'That's your voice beginning to wane away'

I was shocked and scared at this revelation. I clutched the end of Buladi's frayed sari. It was purple. In retrospect, she always wore that purple sari. It's colour had worn and it was more withered and bland now than it was before, but it had not wavered Buladi's vitality for life. It was comforting to be near someone who shared the same excitement at life's trivialities as I did.

-'But I have a surprise for you,' she said with quiet reassurance. 'Yesterday I taught Polly to talk'
-'You did?' I asked, my worries suddenly driven away by the rush of excitement.
-'Yes, and yesterday she told me that Tuku is the most wonderful boy there is!'
-'She did?' I cried, overjoyed. 'Can she sing tu-tu-tu-tu-tu tara?' It was my favourite song at that time. I am almost ashamed.
-'She can. And she did. But you must remember that now she can't fly.'
-'No, Polly can fly. She's always so restless in that cage!' I looked at Polly with the welling eyes of a child that had moved so many hearts before, and her blank eyes stared back, in silent comprehension.
-'Watch, I will show you,' Buladi said as she unlatched the cage and gingerly removed the flightless bird from it.
-'Do you still think she can fly?' she asked, as Polly sat comfortably still in her hands.
-'Yes..' I had faith in her. Everybody has the right to trust.

Without a word Buladi pulled back her hands and then hurled the bird into the sky. I watched, agape as it hung for an interminable instant in the air and then tipped and sank down, down spiraling down, its wings limp fighting the wind with every beseeching cry from above for it to stop. And then it lay sprawled in the grass, a death not grand enough to mourn.

Words were quick to rush back despite the quivering alien emotion taking over. 'Why did you do that?' I demanded of her.
'Because Tuku, yesterday when I taught her to speak, Polly told me she had not long to live. She wanted to go to a better place. She was already dead when you found her today.'
If the cruel wind were allowed to feel a moment of pain and lie still in its wake, a suppressed whimpering might have sailed the raging sky that talking birds could never master. Buladi was telling the truth of course, coz Buladi never lied.

I felt a soft hand on my shoulder as she said, more quietly than before, 'Do you want to know what her last words were?'
I did. But I couldn't say so.
'She said to me, that she would be back, in another body so she could be with Tuku.'

The following day a hole in the garden in my great-grandmum's backyard was dug, much to her protests, and a dead bird buried and a rock placed safely above the gravel as we stood in funereal silence. I remember it, in colour, in the lugubrious haze of which everything that was green is black and everything else is imbued with the colour of pus. Two hours later, Ram da was to return from the market, grinning purposefully with a bag of groceries in one hand and a cage in the other, held aloft with a scarlet-red creature struggling haplessly inside. It was a parrot. it was trained to talk. It even flapped its wings. We named him Polly.

Five months later, we found him in his cage with his eyes bulging out, choked at his neck by the metal wiring of the cage. Polly hadn't lied. Buladi hadn't lied. But then again, Buladi never lied.