In front of Gateway of India and Hotel Taj in Mumbai, there are hundreds of pigeons. The visitors scatter the seeds and they gobble these with insatiable appetite. They can eat literally from your palms. They are not scared by humans.
In one of the visits, I also tried to sit amidst these birds.
Here one of them is eating seeds from my palm.
It has been days I have felt peace and tranquility of mind. In fact it seems that I am living in a state oblivious of my state of mind. Neither do I ever feel that I am calm, neither do I feel very much excited.
What is peace after all? Some say it is the state of mind when your body is in agreement with mind. There is no struggle between two. They seem to merge into one another. In the turbulent state of mind, mind it seems is detached from the body and hovers outside. Body and mind are completely out of sync.
My state of mind is not what Buddha advocated. The middle path. In the state advocated by Buddha, there is peace of mind. Mind is not overly affected either by moments of happiness or by sorrows. It is most difficult to control the feelings which comes when we are elated. We like the world to know that I am happy. When we are unhappy we seek the sympathizers!
What colour is the peace? Some say it is white while others say it is green. Pigeons are symbols of white colored peace while woods are the green colored peace. But pigeons though they don’t seem to harm others, supposed to be innocent and easy target for birds of prey, are very aggressive in the company of their ilk. They will fight with each other to scare away the weaker from the food.
They seem to be deeply involved in the procreation. Their droppings are very corrosive and contain an enzyme. If they fall on the cars they can damage the paint of car if not removed timely. But the enzyme has been used in the tanneries to make the softest leather as the enzyme decomposes any flesh clinging on the hide. In fact, in Fez in Morocco, famous for the best leather in the world, droppings are in great demand.
Whatever the season, I always find the male pigeons dancing around the females wooing them for copulation. Woods as such seem to be beautiful from a distance. Enter into them and you will have to struggle to keep yourself safe from the animals harbored in them. There are woods which are so dense that even the sun rays find it difficult to penetrate.
Peace is in our minds, it comes from within. It is the way we perceive the world. Perceptions are different for different people. Even the way we see around us depends upon whether we are happy or sad. During many moods, sometimes a thing which interested us greatly once holds no interest at a later time. Sometimes emotions seem to be cyclic in nature. We are interested in a particular thing, then lose interest in it and again some events happen which recreate the interest again.
You can be at peace with yourself, if you don’t have high desires and take the life as it comes.
It finally seems that winter is over. The days have become longer and time seems to be lingering. The light seems to be blinding the eyes. Poplars which were bald during the winter have acquired the sparkling green leaves hiding their skeletons. Every other plant and tree has stirred to life.
There is a large increase in the numbers of birds like pigeons, parrots, mynas and others whose names are not known. This is due to the maturing of wheat crops. Many birds can be seen making nests frantically to lay eggs and continue their future generations to gain immortality of their genes by passing them on to coming generations.
In front of our home, there are meadows and water bodies around which the tall grasses and other bushes and vegetation abounds. Ducks and bittern can be seen in these waters. The tall bushes and grasses also provide the roosting place to many kinds of birds except pigeons which have colonised the buildings along with human beings.
Everyday when evening approaches, I sit in the balcony to watch the sky in the west getting coppery red with the sun going down until it dips behind the buildings in the west. Eagles roam the sky. Once in a while a hawk can be seen hovering steadily in a point in the sky pinpointing its prey on the land and descending with blinding fury.
But most beautiful scene is when small groups of birds fly in patterns sometimes going up, then down, left and right. Another group starts from another location and after graceful flight in the sky separate gtoups coalesce and become a single group. Then another and another groups come and join them.
Why they do it every evening? Is it a sort of get together and show to bonding? Must be they share their experiences during the day and take stock of their flock. After meeting again they get separated to find their roosting places for the night. God only knows.
This goes on and as it becomes more and more dark, these groups break and settle in the bushes around the water bodies, trees in the fields. Although it is very difficult to photograph them because of their sheer mobility and unpredictable changes in the direction still some photographs I have taken and shown below.
Resolution is not to the point but still the observation is proved.
When in the year 1991, I got transferred to Mumbai from Silchar, the ONGC colony at Panvel was brimming with occupants so much so that I was allotted a B-type house that had been used as the storage for cement and other building material when construction was going on. After 6 months I got C-type accommodation but not before a flood entered our home. What logically everyone expects to happen in Assam happened with us here in Panvel. That was in 1991.
I got transferred to Assam second time in 2005. I was on leave in July when the flood attacked the colony and ravaged it. We are in the first floor and within minutes the water completely submerged the ground floor. A river was flowing outside in the street.
The flood of 2005 marked a watershed year in the history of the colony. People suffered big losses both emotional as well as economical. A fear psychosis developed in the minds of occupants and an exodus of residents began.
After this incidence, about 1/3rd of the flats in the ground floor are lying vacant. These flats were not even once thoroughly cleaned, disinfected after that. Slowly, the locks began to be broken. It seems that stray dogs-the whole battalions of which roam the colony, pigeons and mosquitoes have been given allotment in these flats. Mosquitoes are breeding and by the evening are on the rampage making every weapon like mosquito coils, good knights and sprays completely ineffective.
Everywhere on the roads, broken building materials are lying. Choice of trees which have been planted is very poor. On many lanes, the trees which are used for fuel wood have been planted. Then there are trees which when flower have so strong a scent that one can choke at night and many children suffer allergies at the flowering time. Other trees exude a certain gummy substance which ruins the paint of the cars standing below them.
Many of the trees are under the vicious attack of termite. There are dead trees standing in the lanes giving apocalyptic warning about the colony becoming a ruin. It certainly looks like a ruin. It is certain that hardly any officer connected with maintenance ever visits the interior of colony.
