The Case of Missing Sparrows

“Una hirundo non facit ver”, that is Latin for “One swallow does not a summer make!”, I am sure you must have read of this maxim somewhere. But in Nilgiris, it is not just one sparrow, there are scores of them here chirping, hopping about like a lark. I wonder if you all have noticed this avian creature in and around your household, in the garden, perched on the trees, lurking about, picking on the worms early mornings. This little bird is almost on the verge of extinction in most of the Northern India. When I spotted them here in Wellington, I was naturally overjoyed, as there are very happy and nostalgic memories associated with these little angels from our childhood. Those were the days, is it sounding clichéd or I am sounding like an old man, may be, but yes it has been quite some time back, when we spotted them everywhere, in fact their nests were very much a part of every household. At times the older generation would clean up the place, the twigs would be removed, and we would get a glimpse of the little nestling young ones with their beaks appearing rather gigantic as compared to their fledgling torso if you can call the rest of it so. Their feathers were treasured and kept hidden within the folds of our books.

The memories are vivid as the grannies would recount stories of the sparrow, in which the female of the species would always turn out to be very naughty and wicked feigning sickness; tricking the poor male into doing the difficult chores related to cooking and she would just simply polish it off for the poor old sod to do the cleaning up act. I often wondered as to why was the female of the species depicted in that manner by the grannies, whereas in actual fact, we grew up watching them always embroiled in the household chores themselves. Was it because they secretly desired to take their “bitter” halves for such a ride, this was their notion of revenge? Or it relates to our collective psyche where we have not yet forgiven Kaikeyi for that scheming act of exiling Lord Rama! Yes it is true even today, the mother-in-law continues to be reviled and sometimes I feel they just have to act the part, even if they do not wish to, just to fulfil the expectations from them, else they would lose relevance.

But I have digressed, today I am writing about the sparrows. Yes, I have another association with them, being a Signal officer; we are referred to as Sparrows, so there is a sort of brotherhood which we share with this “feathered biped”. Since they were inseparable with the urban and rural households alike, I presume, the Signal officer, similarly inseparable from the formation HQ, makes this appointment code quite apt. Not all the appointment codes would satisfy that description though, as rabbits can in no way be associated with the supplies as they consume endlessly rather than supply or for that matter, the eagle for the repair and recovery.

The house sparrow is commonly called “gauraiya” in the vernacular, but its scientific name is “Passer domesticus”. Dr Salim Ali has described them as, “A confirmed hanger-on of man, in hills and plains alike. They are omnivorous; eat grains, insects, fruit buds, flower nectar or kitchen scraps”, so how is it that they decided to do the disappearing act. Without one realising it, slowly they have just faded away from the urban areas and also our memories. We have been too busy catching up with the Joneses (or should I say Gandhis and Patels!) to even notice. There is some semblance of awareness of the extinction of Tigers, Rhinos, Turtles and even Great Indian Bustard, but sparrow being so insignificant that it is gradually fading into oblivion without the Manekas and their ilk even registering it. The litterateurs have also referred to them quite frequently; a few examples need to be quoted just to elucidate their importance. The Greek poet Sappho, in her "Hymn to Aphrodite", pictures the goddess's chariot as drawn by sparrows. The Roman poet Catullus addresses one of his odes to his lover Lesbia's pet sparrow (‘Passer, deliciae meae puellae...’), and writes an elegy on its death (‘Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque...’). In the New Testament, Jesus reassures his followers that not even a sparrow can fall without God's notice, (Luke 12:6; Matthew 10:29). In Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, as Hamlet faces his tragic fate, he says, "There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow", presumably referring to the New Testament quotation shown above. In the Redwall series of fantasy novels, sparrows are portrayed as fierce fighters; the main sparrow character is Warbeak. Wow this was news to me as well!

So what could be the reason for this omnipresent friend of the Homo sapiens ditching us elsewhere, but continuing their association here in the salubrious environs of the “Blue Hills”? I have been wondering, and then it dawned on me, that one of the major differences in our homes here and elsewhere is the absence of a ceiling fan! The ceiling fans have mushroomed over the years, with the mercury zooming in the summer months. Yes, they have become ubiquitous and are as much a necessity as water. But there were times which many of our generation recall rather fondly when places such as Pune, Dehradun, Bangalore and even my native place Indore could boast of houses without provisions for a ceiling fan. In fact I distinctly recall, we purchased our first ceiling fan a small 42’’ Usha in 1974 and it was a luxury to enjoy the privilege of the divine flow of wind on a sweltering hot summer afternoon with temperatures nearing 36 deg Celsius. Amusing, isn’t it, today the mercury zooms past the 40 in early March itself. I wonder, whether this has added to the woes of this bird, as the other common reasons are quite universal in nature, the growing menace of pesticides and the modern architecture not being conducive for their habitat.

So nature lovers behold them; it is just a reminder to register their presence as you would miss them back in the plains. Do make it a point to identify them to the tiny tots and they will treasure this memory forever, may be this would be an incentive for some of them to return to the Nilgiris later in life.