Crow - barred!

Usually, a post-card image of a park has children playing, swings, couples in love, a family picnic, destitute old people, job-less youth, the homeless, people feeding birds and reading books etc., Yesterday, I was sitting in a park expecting to catch this image live. As I was observing, I had a strong feeling that something was amiss. After some serious thought I realized that the omni present bird, “Crow” was missing!

Have you noticed this? What stuck me the most was, I had not spotted a sparrow either! (The frequency of the mobile communication was the same as that of the sparrow and hence it has seen its tragic end). The very thought of us killing someone when we speak hurts me. The last time I saw a crow was in the movie “Resident Evil: Extinction”. It comes out as a surprise for the protagonists when they notice a raven and more so when it attacks in large numbers. In the last decade I have come to notice that sparrow is extinct and its poor cousin, the crow, is also headed in that direction and, it is already, in some parts of the globe. I recently came across an article about “Hawaiian Crow” becoming extinct and that it is already extinct in big cities like LA, London etc., where it is legal to hunt them because of their menace! Huh! Is the menace more than what the teens do in those parts of the world? I don’t know!

During my childhood days, not long ago, I used to have a couple of sparrows as pet! I was more concerned during those days that the “nari kuravas” (a gypsy mountain tribe in India) would steal/hunt those sparrows and hence used to be very protective of them. We as children have grown up listening to the fable of an intelligent crow. Yes, I am referring to “The Crow and the Pitcher” a fable ascribed to Aesop. In the fable, a thirsty crow comes upon a pitcher with water at the bottom, beyond the reach of its beak. After failing to push over the pitcher, the crow devises a clever plan: it drops in pebbles, one by one, until the water rises to the top of the pitcher, allowing the crow to drink. This story traces its history to 2nd century Greek and Latin era. But, I noticed that this story is now not even a part of children’s curriculum. They don’t even know the concept of scare crows. May be the story of crow would be covered as a part of the museum visit!!! Crow was something which was integral to our way life as Brahmins (a caste in India). We used to set aside a small portion of the food as soon as it was prepared to the crow on the kitchen window sill and then proceed with our meal for the day. This is a ritual which is followed even today, just that we clean up the previous day’s food instead of a crow feasting on it.

Ruminating this, I reached home and was watching the news. I came across a news item which was about the Animal Welfare Board (AWB) threatening to sue a major telecom company for making a dog run behind a school bus in one of its commercials, for, it believed that the pug would have been put under duress. I was shocked at the publicity stunt!

Where was the AWB when the coming of mobile revolution in India just rendered an entire species (sparrow) extinct? Where is it now, regarding the crow? The likes of Menaka Gandhi, Medha Patkar, and AWB are busy making headlines, page 3 appearances and publicity stunts that they fail to look at these small things which eventually end up causing ecological imbalances and big catastrophes.

I think its time WE start “cawing” about stuff which we strongly feel about!

- Ciao