Pigeons In The House

 

We have illegal immigrant pigeons all over the ceiling of our rented bungalow which they have conveniently made it their home too without even having the courtesy of seeking our permission!  Initially, it started with a flock of about seven pigeons. But as days went by, their numbers started increasing rapidly. I later found out that apart from the increase in their family as a result of their immoral activities, they had the audacity to even invite their colleagues and family et al comfortably nesting in other houses also to shift and make homes on our ceiling!

I have no allergy for the pigeon per se, but they have always proved to be a constant source of irritation for me and my family.. what with their droppings spilled not only outside all the walls of our house, but it would even be found dripping down through the small gaps between the ceiling and the walls in our alter room. To add to our misery, the constant tapping and scratching sounds and irritating cooing on the ceiling just when we are about to retire for the night or already lost in dream-world added with a generous amount of boisterous fightings among the self-styled macho male pigeons over their fairer sex has been driving us nuts! I decided enough is enough. This is war!

My rented bungalow is an old building which had rusted CGI Sheets full of holes as roof. Every monsoon season, it has always been a busy affair for my family with even our seven years old son faithfully joining us in the routine job of placing big buckets in strategic locations in the living room and the three bedrooms to collect rain-water dripping down in full force as if flowing down from a fully opened water tap! Therefore, It was high time to do a thorough work of re-roofing , a job that I had been postponing frequently due to paucity of time. However, I now felt that no time was right other than NOW. It was the opportunity of a lifetime to end my misery not only from the rain water but to declare war on the mortal enemies on the ceiling that has been making our lives hell.

After the laborers had fully taken out the old roof, they invited me to see the condition of the inhabitants on the ceiling. There were nests strewn all over with eggs. I allowed my Buddhist sentiment to sporadically rest for awhile  and assumed the role of an army general in the battlefield! I gathered the intrepid workers around me and shared my secret war plan with them down to the last minute details.  I then climbed down from the roof, entered my living room, sat down on the sofa and smiled the most wicked and satisfied smile of victory that even my wife started to dread! “Honey, are you okay?” she asked. “Yeah..yeah.. “ I retorted simply. “Are there nests on the ceiling, I mean eggs and baby birds?” she wanted to know. “Oh no” I lied... “just few empty nests which we are going to remove now. Don’t worry, darling...these pigeons will come back and when they don’t find their nests, they will go and make new homes in other places” I reassured my wife. My religious wife would play spoilsport if I shared what my instructions were to the laborers!

Allow me to spare the gory details... but within the next few hours, the entire ceiling was cleaned and the workers started placing and fixing the new TATA Shakti CGI sheets. I now had the newest and most shiny roof in the entire town with all gaps between the roof and the ceiling secured with wire nets. I celebrated my victory silently and my family had the most satisfying sleep for the next few days.

That is, until the cooing and wild tapping noise started all over again! It was impossible... my war plans were perfect and I had checked and double checked down to the last details when the work was over... and I had declared myself as the victor. I was now starting to get a nervous breakdown, feeling defeated and dejected.

One day, I returned home from my office a bit early to find the largest flock of these very pigeons outside my house busy feasting on the generous amount of rice spread all over in the parking lot. Horrified, wrathful and with the look of stupefaction clear on my face, I rushed inside the house and demanded to know who the kind Buddha was in my house! “Why, what’s wrong, darling?” my wife asked off handedly. “Who is feeding these pigeons and I also want to know how long this has been going on” I almost barked and roared at the same time! Her reply squashed the last ounce of spirit left in me!

She explained that after the new roofing was done, she was heartbroken to find the pigeons perched on the top of the roof looking for their homes and not finding any gap to enter inside. Therefore, she instantly called a labourer paying him Nu. 500/= of MY money to cut a wide opening in one corner of the wire nets. Now that all of them has come back, she carries out the daily feeding duty as usual which I had never noticed because it was always before my office time was over! She even narrated an incident when, during one of the feeding rituals, the neighbour’s cat grabbed the opportunity and pounced on one of the unsuspecting pigeons and darted off to enjoy the fresh meat. She said that she cried for nearly two hours that day!

When you have a traitor within your family and that traitor happens to be your other half, you are all alone on one side and thus, it is always a losing battle. I now found merit in the old saying, ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’. Therefore, I resigned to my fate... a loser and a sinner!

These days, I sit on the doorsteps outside my house with my wife every evening, holding hands and feeding the fair-feathered birds together while silently repenting for my sin! I have also started getting used to the tapping and scratching sounds on the ceiling and sometimes, even hum soft tunes or Rock n' Roll numbers on my pillows to match the back-up music of tapping beats and cooing chorus from above till I doze off to the dream world!