Ee! Winging it.

Once upon a time, there lived a little chicken in a little chicken world with her little chicken needs. Oh no! Not so simple, my friend. This is the tale of one of the most quintessential bird from our day-to-day life, someone fretful, yet so animated and spirited, now isn’t that aspirational? Without further ado, let’s delve into such a time when one such braveheart lived - a time when this city was still a little town and home to many a quiet dead ends.

Away from the din of civilisation, hidden away in one such cul-de-sac, nurtured by the shadows of mango, coconut, banana, neem, jackfruit and areca trees, we lived our halcyon lives in a cemented ‘ek-tala bari’ (single-storey house.) In those days our home was only called ‘bari,’ without the need of any adjective. Such simplicity united all of us, whist we continued living closer to the earth, amidst the bed of floral “flames” from the radiant flame-of-the forest. We played ‘chor-poolish,’ ‘kumir-danga’ (variations of the game ‘catch me if you can’) all afternoon before the unison of “aee bari chole aee!” (Hello there! return home) from neighbourhood aunties radiated through the evening breeze. From a distance I would notice my ma trudging back from office with polythene bags suspended from both of her forearms, delicately balancing each side, perfectly maintaining her centre of gravity. The polythene bags were almost always filled with ‘aloo-chop’/‘shingara’/Nepalese-style ‘momo’/ Siliguri-style chowmein, accompanied by the sweet of the day - usually Rosogolla or Sandesh. The intoxicating waft of these delectable eatables have since been encapsulated in my memory and will continue to entice me forever.

Sundays started with the tunes of ‘Chitrahaar’ from Doordarshan, my baba humming along and occasionally stopping to wake my brother and I from the depths of our slumber. I could hear the distant calls of “baba, othoo!” (“Dear, wake up”) permeating through the covers and pervading my dreams within minutes. However, I couldn’t be rushed into making any sudden movements in posture, so my father would patiently wait while I turned over, then made a small movement towards the left, then the right and finally drowsily sat upright before giving in to the golden hue that would fill the mornings in our little 80 square-feet shared bedroom. My brother would generally get accustomed to the rigour of the mornings more easily than me. I most definitely dawdled, locating my posterior from one cushioned seat of our antique teak sofa (our only prized possession) to another, from one room to the next, exhausted from all the choices around and strenuous decision-making process, oft-times collapsing and just descending on the cold cemented floor. I still remember the cold prone embraces providing the much needed respite from the hot June mornings before being jolted into reality by the final shrill of my mother’s lost patience.

It was one such June morning when we had just finished our sumptuous breakfast of ‘luchi’ and ‘aloo bhaja’ (fried flat-bread and potato fries) when it was time for my father to cycle off to the nearby bazaar and procure the weekly groceries and Sunday-special protein. It had followed from the unanimous decision of the previous night that this Sunday protein would be chicken (yes we were after the life of a nervous wreck as we are non-vegetarians with no further explanations to give.) It is to be noted here that my father never writes down lists before going to the market, instead he insists on committing everything to memory. While he was speedily regurgitating the to-do list my mother had assembled through the week, my brother, a then habitual whiner, started whining about accompanying my father to the chicken shop. My brother, neither stout-hearted nor thoughtful, a simple boy aged seven, was insistent on the fulfilment of his demands. A firm ‘no’ had already resulted in kicks and screeches and destruction of the ever-so-dwindling numbers of our collective toy blocks (identified commonly as Lego in present times.) There was no way of subduing him hence an impromptu decision was made to accommodate the raucous and volatile child.

No more than half an hour had passed when I heard the ding of my father’s bicycle in dissonance with the clucking of a hen. Never would I have expected to see a live chicken petrified to the core, feet tied, precariously balancing itself on the lap of my brother, who was himself perched upon the steel bar of the Hercules bicycle. It was mixed emotions for me because, on one hand I was elated at the prospect of having a pet hen and on the other, I was not entirely convinced that an act of gruesome violence on a live animal wouldn’t take place in the premises of this ek-tala bari. My mother was perplexed because there was no trace of even a singular ticked off item from her meticulously prepared to-do list. She needed a credible explanation of the happenings of the past half an hour and so did I. Clouds of what? how? why? began finally dissipating when my father narrated the tale. This simple brother of mine had no clue that a chicken shop is no place for children, he hadn’t the faintest idea that the “chicken shop” is synonymous with a butcher’s nook. He, for some apparent lapse of his synapses, hadn’t formed the correlation in his brain that chicken meat came from a live chicken. After he had freshly acquired the wisdom involving the fragility of life and the inconceivable harmony of both theoretical knowledge and real life (really, who would have guessed,) he declined to participate in such ghastly acts of horror. My father had already picked out the chicken for the Sunday feast but now she would become our pet. Because of the highly anticipated and the freshly experienced fit from the morn, my father simply agreed to the child’s importunity. And this time it was an innocent one too.

There was no special lunch that day but we had no complaints. Our concentration was singularly focused on our new friend; she was an active little creature. Frightful at first, she quickly got accustomed to our human ways. By evening she had picked up on the basic cues - when we called out to her, her bobbing head would look for us until it located the origin of the calls, we had reinvented the game of hide-and-seek with her. By night-time, an assortment of grains to feed the little fowl, were strewn all about the cemented floor of our living room. The dark coloured grains were harder to locate so they remained in their semi-permanent dwelling until one fateful day either our chick finally snacked on them or the tip of a broom caught them by surprise. We followed her around and so did she. We tried to incorporate her in every game we played. Gradually she partook in all activities with gusto and some even with valour. She undertook endeavours purely to awe us - like balancing herself on our narrow compound wall, and strutting on it with half a shrug as if to exhibit her gymnastic skills and nimbleness. Her hints were quickly gathered by us as we lost no time and decided to involve her in more risky games lest she should distance herself from us after having succumbed to ennui.

So one day after such demonstration of talent, we took heed and readied our pull-back toy cars with the mightiest pull of our lives. Then lifting her by the feathers we helped her unceremoniously alight on the roof of a green car. With all the preparations in place, we finally let go of the highly tensile toy. Swoosh! bolted the car towards the front door, as the chicken took an impromptu flight for her life, her feathers flapped hysterically as she let out a nervous cackle, her flight now relatively high saw no signs of a descent. We were hooraying even though it was a dubious misadventure, because witnessing our chick fly was a first in both of our lives. We couldn’t be vanquished as from our perspective, we felt like proud parents literally holding ( in our case, pinning down) the claws of our tiny one while she learnt to fly, albeit jeopardising her life. Thank goodness chickens can fly. We didn’t bother tallying our plan vis-a-vis outcome and only rejoiced. Throughout the rest of that evening, we tried to nudge her to fly again while she kept insinuating avoidance. She held on to the terror for sometime before conceding to her same old bonhomous self. We made up like siblings even though hours ago my brother and I had fleetingly experienced parenthood. She thrived with us in this nameless relationship, or at least I hope she did.

Now I should address the fact - before you start wondering - that we led most of our unchaperoned days lavishly, bubbling with extravagant ideas and exploring newer avenues while our parents slogged with their dutiful selves. One such unshackled day, while watching ‘Shaktiman’ (saga of a beloved Indian superhero) comfortably situating himself atop a skyscraper, enjoying the gusts of wind in his good-boy hairdo, we made a snap decision. We also wanted to make our tiny-tot experience the feeling of being on top of the world. We went through several iterations of “good” ideas. We could just take her to our terrace and mount her on the edges of one of the tallest unfinished pillars and pretend like she was our very own Statue of Liberty. However the idea had to be scrapped because on careful inspection in the planning stage, we came across some speed-bumps in the form of iron rods protruding from those unfinished pillars. Hurting her or ourselves would bring about some serious impediments to our drollery.

We then hit upon a plan to build the tallest skyscraper we possibly could with all our assimilated toy block collections. As we began, some joints were as perfect as velcro, while the rest were merely ornamental, ready to tumble like a Jenga tower (like I mentioned - “assimilated.”) We clearly hadn’t enough idea about the physics of stable equilibrium, centre of gravity or even simple load support. The building itself couldn’t stand upright, let alone being able to uphold our emblem of liberation. The future iterations of the buildings were more stable though not half as high or fun to experiment with. By now we had circled back to the terrace idea with a little re-invention. We started displacing furnitures from the household. Plastic chairs were being uprooted from their locations and dragged to the roof-top with a lot of enthusiasm. We centered these estranged jerry-built furnishings in the best vantage point. Without wasting any time, we climbed on the chairs and with our arms stretched as high towards the beating sun as possible, we lifted our chick, vicariously living through her liberation, her wings flapping vigorously either with exhilaration or panic, we had neither inkling nor heed for. She had either relinquished to the tempest of nuisance in her day-to-day life or had welcomed this extemporised way of life with open wings. We lived in the moment, we laughed and we wished to conquer even greater heights - the perilsof human desires begins at infancy.

Thus, we summoned the help of the most animated table in human existence. With all the bents in its plastic legs, it gave an impression to any onlooker that it had the power to run or in the least, speed-walk. We huffed and puffed and pivoted up the stairs with it - like ‘Ross’ from ‘Friends’ did. Ultimately finding its flimsy footing on the ground of the aforementioned vantage point, it undertook the Brobdingnagian responsibility of supporting all of the following: another chair above it, one of us imps atop the chair, and finally the fowl to be held above like a cherry on top. It was an ambitious project but we were over-zealous and highly committed. I held onto the jouncy chick, while my brother climbed above the tower of furnitures and after the final hand-over of our beloved pet was made, he took his position of ‘Mufasa’ introducing his Hen Princess (reference to The Lion King) to the rest of the civilisation. Although the Hen Princess had turned quite unflappable and apathetic by now and showed little zing, our excitement couldn’t be subdued. This was a pivotal moment in our lives; we were once again reliving our glorious evanescent parenthood. So incredible was the feeling of re-enactment of a movie and the concurrent experience of insurmountable victory, that for the first time ever my brother decided to trade places with me without any imploring.

Before he could descend, I jumped on the table without missing a beat, and Bam! Down tumbled the chair and with it the belching princess once again taking an impromptu lift-off, this time soaring with intentional purpose and deliberation. The table now shaking to the core with palpable exhilaration started rocking to and fro, until it finally lurched to one of its four sides a bit too much, thereby displacing both of us unsteady ideators. Thud! fell my brother on his forearms while I plunged into the concrete relying on my “sinewy” legs. I somehow found an unsteady footing while my knees bent forward in desperation for additional support. There was utter chaos for a few seconds. We gasped for breath and swiftly glanced at each other with apprehension. Inspecting each other’s scrapes and bruises and having half-processed the aftermath of the debacle, we stood upright, my focus now entirely on the airborne princess. Our eye-level couldn’t locate her, but the evening breeze brought with it a coo, too familiar to miss. She was now perched on one of the pillars - reminding us of the forlorn idea that we had once reluctantly abandoned. She mockingly cooed at us, as if to say, “you minions! underestimating your real overlord. The nervous chicken had turned into a haughty princess in the matter of minutes. She didn’t budge for several minutes thereafter. We had no time to wonder if it was from the recent trauma or hubris. We bellowed at her so that she would descend instantly and we could rearrange the furnitures in time before the true overlords of this household returned from their offices. With the sun’s descent towards the horizon, her temperament pacified as she knew the elders’ influx would soon bring about a much needed respite to her volatile day. Peering over the terrace wall, we could see our mother plodding towards our beloved flame-of-the-forest. The ruby petal showers harmonised with the zephyr in slow-motion as we scampered from one end of the terrace to another. We shoved the chair down the flight of stairs as it toppled and bruised the walls. Having learnt our lesson, we maintained a more cautious approach during the table’s descent, helping the table slide gently down the steps as my brother and I held onto the elevated side firmly. We managed just in time to masquerade the affairs of the day. My mother although suspicious of the atypical quietude around her, was also quite exhausted to look for anomalies. That evening, slipping under the radar, the bruises on the walls remained in utter darkness as my brother and I reinforced our unspoken fraternal pact over a cup of Darjeeling tea and hot momos from the thela-gari (push-cart.)

We continued to have more fulfilling frolicsome experiences with our fowl princess until one fateful day she fell ill and could no longer garner enough energy to participate in any more non-consensual tourneys with us. We continued to follow her sluggish claws around, while she navigated us through her difficult days. Hand-in-claw we walked together, sharing in her remaining days. My brother and I became hyper vigilant as she grew sicker. We took turns being with her, sharing in her space during the last few days of her life. She taught us about the inevitability of life’s consequence; however she was undeterred. Even in extreme anxiety and peril (often leading to her own detriment,) she had embraced the life she had, with open wings. When she was gone, we missed her, my brother missed her even longer, weeks after she was gone. We gathered cognizance of a solemn truth, yet lived for a new day which always brought about a newer experience for us. We lived in extraordinary times, thriving in vivacious ideas, sharing in indomitable spirit and experiencing each moment with incredible exuberance and unbridled optimism. It was overtly simple and such was the childhood as lived in the 90s.