This happened some time back almost
during the time of the last angst autumn. In my evening fiestas I used to gaze
at the horizon, I used to strain my eyes as it trailed the changing shades of
the sky and merged into the darkness of the night. A particular sight awaited
me every day without fail and if it didn’t I seemed deem myself a failure for
the afternoon. This mellifluous sight was that of a bird, petite and cute
beyond compare. With much energy it filled my evening sky with its wondrous
twitter. I am from now on going to refer her as a she for I know not how to
find the gender of a bird and it is always much cuter when it is a she.
She was so dainty and yet so active,
flying around the sky as if in some desperate pursuit, soothing was her voice,
her chatter, her far away tweets. Yet unknown to me she had a heart of lead
that weighed on her. I never knew then that all her energy was just a pretend,
an act of the eloped. It would be some time since then when the bird would
eventually come to rest in my palms and we would share much love and many
emotions. But going back to the story, by then she had made herself a humble
abode upon my little cherry tree, Indeed the cherry tree was not that little
but she was a bit little when viewed in the context of the behemoths that
surrounded her in the nearby woods.
As days flew by like the leaves in
the autumn, she and I had made an invisible connection. I would often feel like
she was talking to me when I heard her distant cooing and I would feel that the
eternal dance of hers was but for me to watch. True or not we had got connected
in a level of existence in a realm much above the one of common understanding.
She had become my pet, neither the one that was bound by the materialistic
confines of a cage nor the one whose heart and thought was confined by an
authoritarian lease, but my pet nevertheless.
But then it had occurred on that day
when the fate stood still, as it watched an eternal criss-crossing of destinies
when my little bird had got hurt by some despicable evil. Her wings had been
clipped, her freedoms curtained, she fell from the sky like a stone on to the
heaps of scarlet leafs. She laid there in waiting for my warm hands to cup her
and carry her to the warm coziness of my home and to the warmer corners of my
heart. There I did dress her would with much love and compassion as if she was
my little daughter, that too quiet literally with bandages and ointments that I
had. I cared for her, I looked after her and from that day forth till today we
spend innumerable evenings discussing and rambling about many a wonderful
things during our customary evening siesta.
But then again as she gained my
heart bit by bit, I started to dread the reality that was today, an inevitable
day that was not in my power to prevent, I would have been cruel and selfish in
the past few days praying that she never would get better but then again this
was the day for which I had cared for her, the day she could be free once again
and adorn my evening sky with her tweeting and ramblings. I know she would
never fly far away and I know the cherry tree will forever remain her abode but
then you could never tell and this very thought had been haunting me for some
time now.
But nevertheless today is here and
the day must happen for our destinies were written not now but ages ago. It
stood there cupping her in my arms as it ruffled around her petite silhouette.
I slowly undid her band aids and held my hands up in the air and with tears
rolling down my cheek and sinister thoughts haunting my mind I let her go. I
watched her fly away from by hand just like she always did I could feel the
instantaneous loss of weight upon my hand. My heart skipped a beat when she
skipped a flap of her wings and for that one moment when she appeared to fall
my heart leap. But she is the child of freedom, it is in her nature to fly and
it was inevitable that she would do that. I always knew that she was destined
for freedom, though it is true that I wish she would not but hers is the sky to
fly and ones again as I sit back in my chair looking up at the evening sky I
knew what we were and how we were to be.
