This post is dedicated to Sukanya. Thanks Suku, for writing about something that made something from the recesses of my mind come to the fore.

How I overcame my fear of crows

As a kid, the crow, and especially the raven; they were the birds I feared the most. I had read a Bohemian tale where a witch had a raven and the raven spied for her, informing her of the hero's whereabouts. So whenever a crow or a raven came near me, I could imagine a witch spying on me from the raven's eye. Needless to say, I used to shoo the birds away. This lasted till one day during my summer vacations, I went to live with my grandparents in Paral.

Nana [my maternal grandfather] is an early riser, and always has been. I used to sleep early, lulled by my Aaji's haripaat'h. She used to sing it before going to bed, and by the time she was done, everyone but she would be asleep, it was that beautiful, and she sang it beautifully. It is something about her that I will never forget. A sunray filtered through the netted window and woke me up. There was a murder outside, circling the balcony, and there my Nana stood, clad in his pyjamas and his zanva with 9 threads, which indicated that he was the head of the family. I had no zanva, which indicated my status as 'kid'. But what I saw made me shrink back in fear.

He was the reason the murder was there; he was feeding them kneaded wheat dough. There was a crow on his arm, and one on his shoulder! I was incredulous. I called out to him, "Nana!" All he did was looked at me and grinned wide. "Are ye ithe, gammat dakhavto tula." He said, beckoning me. I barely inched from my place. I could imagine the evil hag spying on my Nana. He made a small ball of the dough, about the size of a bearing and tossed it up into the air. The crow on his arm lifted off and caught it in his beak! As a kid, any animal that could perform tricks was cool, and so the fear of the crow subsided a little. I took a few more steps closer to him. "Nana, tyala majhya hatavar basva na?" I stuck out my arm, but he shook his head, as if he spoke for them. I looked at the crow on his arm. It was looking at me intently, all right. What it was thinking, I wondered.

He handed me the ball of dough. "Lahan gole karun thev kadevar". I obliged him by making small balls of the dough and keeping them on the parapet. The crows weren't very trusting. One of them danced down the parapet and picked one up, then another. By now, I was enjoying this exercise, but the crow always kept a distance. It used to always be 4 or 5 balls behind me, and appeared to maintain that distance deliberately. So I stopped. So did it. I looked at Nana and chuckled. The crow then pretended that I did not exist there and ate the 4 balls, just like that.

Now that I think of it, the crow wasn't afraid of me, but may be he sensed my fear, and kept his distance lest I act upon my fear and attack him first. If so be the case, the crow would be smarter than a particular person I know who attacks other people impulsively. Not beating around the bush, the crow then looked me straight in the eye and cawed. It knew I had more dough, and it wanted more. So I made a small ball and tossed it in the air. He flew! He actually did a half jump-half flight and caught it. The evil witch had been erased from my mind. I was all for crows now. Alas, it was no use. My mother awoke soon after and scolded Nana for spoiling me and exposing me to wild creatures. He did not argue.

My mom feeds crows polis ever since Aaji passed away, because they say that crows are like the messengers to the other world or something. I never repeated the exercise again, however. Maybe the next time I go to Paral, I will.

And that is why the crow is my favourite bird.

ps: I am so homesick right about now...