Offbeat (11): Sparrows and lizards were my Adhivasis!

By John B. Monteiro
Bellevision Media Network

27 August 2012: According to a report from Delhi, on August 14, 2012, the humble sparrow was conferred the status of Delhi’s State Bird. The decision was announced at a function to inaugurate the “Rise for the Sparrows” campaign aimed at saving the tiny, endangered bird, said Nature Forever Society chief Mohammed Dilawar. In a similar move, Sudhir Vasudeva, CMD of ONGC, launched the Save the House Sparrow campaign on its Dehra Dun campus. He said: “The decline in the number of sparrow is a natural alarm bell for environmental degradation and we must save them before it is too late”. He added that predator and accident-proof nest boxes will be installed on the campus to help the birds to find a better place to nest.

 
That reminds me of a beautiful song in the 1965 classic movie, The Sound of Music, which is sung melodiously by Julie Andrew with her “screen children”. The opening lines are:

 
Edelweiss, Edelweiss,
Every morning you greet me.
Small and white, clean and bright,
You look happy to greet me.
 
 ( Incidentally, the song became so popular that people thought that it was the National Anthem of Austria. Edelweiss is the name of a flower).

 
I was reminded of these lines every morning when I rise pre-dawn and switch on the drawing room light. The sparrows nesting in the hollow of the ceiling fans would be the first to wake up and fly away. Before I come to them, let me mention the half a dozen lizards that scurry out of their nightly hideout behind the large framed portrait of Jesus hung on the wall. Then they start their scavenging job, gobbling down every conceivable insect unfortunate enough to land on the walls. Their spotting the prey, planning the strategy to corner it, either by allowing it to move within easy reach or quietly inching forward for the final assault and conquest, is a poetry in motion. There seems to be no point of satiation. Because, the scavenging and gobbling down goes on till my nightly light-out. I don’t know what happens then and if lizards are night blind.

 
 
My attention to lizards was first drawn, 55 years ago, by a relative who perhaps had TB and had to remain unmarried till middle age overtook him. He was stick-thin but was repeatedly saying that a person should be thin like a lizard, thus making himself a role model. This was before the famous model, Twiggy, made stick-slim a virtue and changed the concept of beauty, spawning sliming clinics. There must have been some unspoken admirers of lizard-like thinness because my relative finally met his match in an even thinner dame approaching middle age herself. Their brood, however, moved away from lizards – in terms of physical dimensions.

 
Now we hear of lizards only when some of them fall into cooked food and cause poisoning in those who eat such food. When this involves large numbers, like midday meal for school children, and as the victims are rushed to hospital, lizards make headlines. But no one stops to think about their discreet existence and the blessings they impart as destroyers of insects like mosquitoes and flies.

 
I have yet another reason to welcome their greeting and darshan first thing every morning. We have a belief that if a black cat passes one’s path the first thing in the morning, it is bad omen and an invitation to ruin for the rest of the day. There are cats, including black ones, scurrying around our garden and walking on the compound wall. (Incidentally, the word catwalk used in fashion shows is derived from cats walking on low walls). The lizards save me from the risk of seeing black cats as I set forth to anchor the sessions of Bondel Laughter Club, starting at 6.15 AM.

 
As I noted earlier, lizards are discreet and maintain a low profile even on high walls. When I first came to Bondel to occupy Johnlyn Cottage twelve years ago, it was the sparrows which greeted me every morning. Since the house was ready two years earlier and remained unoccupied, it provided a cozy setting for sparrows, nesting in small chambers atop the fan rod. Thus, sparrows and lizards are adhivasis of my cottage. People welcome sparrows into their homes because of the belief that they foreshadow the tenanting of the cradle in the house. In today’s population control era, cradles are not so welcome compared to the era gone by when a brood of a dozen was the pride of parents and envious talk of the town. The sparrow might have realised that we are beyond hope as far as providing tenants for the cradle. They gracefully made themselves scarce.

 
The bottom-line is don’t ignore or dismiss the lizard. It works as our scavenger inside the home. Welcome the sparrow if we have newly-weds in our house and if they postpone the arrival of their first-born in preference to career advancement --because it foreshadows tenancy for the cradle.

 
Now I miss the adhivasi sparrows. It seems that radiation from communication towers has driven them to extinction. I would any day welcome them back to may cottage, though with no hope of cradle-filling as senior citizens we live in an empty nest.

 

Chew on this!

 

 

John B. Monteiro, journalist and author, is Editor of his website, www.welcometoreason.com (Interactive Cerebral Challenger) – with provision for instant response. Try responding!