The Winged Affair!

Never really outgrowing my sixteen year old self, I’m a perpetual and die hard romantic at heart. Not to mention, a sucker for all things even remotely related to “romance”.

So imagine my utmost pleasure when on stepping out onto my balcony one fine morning, I stumbled upon a beautiful and dainty nest!

On peering closely and peeping in unashamedly, I discovered it to be a haven of a pair of beautiful and dreamy eyed pigeons. 

Ah! the pleasure!

The feeling that my balcony could become an abode for these dear and sweet birds was heavenly. I could imagine my morning wake up call to be the sweet chirping of the birds and nights filled with their soft cooing, lulling my senses into oblivion. I could already imagine the colour of the bird house I was going to install to make the life of my feathery friends more comfortable and my balcony more environment friendly….like literally!!

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That night, with all plans in place and all lists of items to be bought for the bird house firmly latched and locked in my memory and my notepad, I dropped into a pleasant slumber….Only to be suddenly woken up by loud and shrill screeching. Totally bleary eyed and dazed from sleep, I stumbled towards the sound of my distress.

To my utmost horror, I discovered a full fledged party going on in my balcony. MY VERY OWN BALCONY!!!

The whole pigeon brood seemed to be there. All the uncles and aunts and cousins and their kids…everyone.
And they were making merry and screeching and dancing and fluttering and prancing around with abandon. They had taken the term ” feel at home” much too seriously; so much so that I started doubting whether the place was mine or not!

Anyways, after their midnight shenanigans, with the party going on till the wee hours; I was totally sleep deprived and exhausted in the morning. All my initial charm of being a “birdy mommy” literally flew out of the window. I somehow consoled myself that it just might have been some sort of ” fly away house warming party” of sorts for my sweet pigeons….a rare one time occurance. 

But the next day, all my dreams just “flew away”.

The pigeon family just decided to greet their neighbours, The Owls! And the greetings were in the form of across the balcony introductions, where the pigeons screamed a greeting and were greeted by an answering greeting via screech by The Owls. Their conversation went on and on to the point that I was on the verge of pulling out all my hair or banging my head against the nearest wall.

And so the third, fourth and fifth night came and went with my dearest pigeons displaying their socially active nature by conversing with all the fellow birds, whether day or night.

 And with their rock and roll and meet and greet, my mental and nocturnal peace flew away. Whoever said that animals understand the language of humans better, never defined the language. Now I know why!!!  

The number game

The 10 heads of the demon king Raavan;

The 9 lives of a cat;

The “asht-dhaatu” or amalagamation of 8 metals in making a statuette;

The 7 “Sur” (notes) in music;

The “Panchamrit” or the mixture of 5 liquids used in the traditional “Pooja” (hindu prayers)

The 4 directions;

The “Trimurti” signifying the 3 main dieties Of Hinduism…

Numbers play such an important role in our day to day lives. Sometimes it becomes impossible to describe, denote or incorporate topics in our conversation or discussion without the help of digits; so much so that even our idioms and phrases have ample smattering of numerical references.

So a betrayed person becomes “Once bitten, twice shy”,
After a lot of effort gone to waste, one comes back to “square one”,
A picture can be worth a “thousand words”,
A situation can be a “catch 22”,
One can be on “cloud nine” with ecstasy,
For some, “15 minutes of fame” is enough,
A “high-five” isn’t the only thing exchanged between friends,
A marriage which survives the “seven year itch” is strong (these days it can be said about all relationships)

The list is endless….

How and why did maths become such an integral part of language. The former is supposed to be practical and precise while the latter is perceived to be based on a bevy of emotions and is seen to be descriptive in nature. So how did these two merge?

Many times there are situations specific to an event or sometimes they are so strongly etched in the memory of the onlooker that any similar situation is best expressed by keeping the previous one in mind. It can be vividly described in the least of words by just giving the reference to the earlier event.

So “9-2-11 hona” (Hindi idiom) originated from the number of bells hinting the arrival and departure of a train; hence is used for someone’s running off hurriedly;
“99 ke pher me” (another Hindi idiom) is used to donate the squirmish and tension on reaching very close to the goal, but not yet touching it;
A fleeting and short termed fame is always denoted by “15 minutes of fame”;
An immaculate dress up falls in the category of “dressed to the nines”…

I looked in all the “4” directions, racked my brain “twice over”, but couldn’t find the link between all these numerical instances and the people around me didn’t give “two cents for my feather-brainy mumbo-jumbo. So now I hope to be “third time lucky” that maybe one of you can help me by satisfying my curiosity!!!