The sun rises at 6.30 in the morning. Our bedroom faces the West and the small windows are covered with aluminium foil to stop the tiniest sun beam getting in. We can sleep in deep hot dreams until we sweat ourselves out of the bed or until one of us turns the A.C. on. Theoretically yes. But there is a group of little pigeons under our bedroom balcony who as a family perform ‘Surya Namaskara’* every morning at 6.30. They coo melodically one by one. One starts the other one stops. In Turkey we imagine they are praying ; chanting ‘huu’ to call out to god in a deep morning trance. They do it (to the sun?) here too. Right after the faint Morning Prayer I hear in my deepest psyche, they start. I lay in bed half awake listening to them. I almost see them whirling with little pigeon feet around themselves chanting ‘coo’, ‘coo’. In one of the fairytales I have read in the distant past to Kitty, the pigeons were young love struck girls turned in to birds by an evil curse. They whirl praying to be free: ’coo’,’coo’.
At 7.00 to accompany the pigeons the shriek of a peacock rips the morning. Every morning, that glamorous bird sees her own ugly feet and cries in despair. Every night she goes to bed hoping it is going to be better the next day. Alas, her curse continues- yet another day with ugly feet. No wonder she shrieks. One lonesome magpie joins her with amazement. He only makes out the same rising tone, going up a note every time. He stops before the climax; looks at the peacock and starts again. ‘What ugly feet!’
From the deep end of the street below a sad, heart-breaking flute tune follows the peacock sorrow. A simple bamboo flute song comes slowly into the bedroom. He plays the same tune every morning. I can almost hear the lyrics of the song:
Come, let’s go to Juhu Beach,
I missed your bangles tinkling,
Your sari thrown over your shoulder,
When the sun goes down
Come. Let’s go to Juhu Beach.
He walks along the street carrying hundreds of flutes stuck to a bucket. He slowly walks, listens to people non-calling him to buy a flute, and sits on one of the garden walls and talks to the security guards. When he walks away he plays the only tune he knows,: ‘Come, let’s go to Juhu beach.’
The morning panic kicks in our household. Breakfast, lunch bag preparation, coffee, tea, one missing lonely sock, one hair bauble lost in a household black hole, I wonder how two people going out can make morning life so busy.
At 7.45 they leave. I have another mug of tea and read the papers deciding which shows, which plays I will not be able to go. This one is too far away; this one is too early in the evening, that one will not go well with a teenage girl. Then the mystery starts. I went out to see who it was but there was no clue to reveal it.
‘Claraneey!’. It sounds exactly like that: ’Claraneey’. I spotted a man with a bicycle. He is not wearing a uniform of any description, he walks with the bicycle, not carrying anything on, around, behind the bicycle, he stops randomly, looks around and lets it go ‘Claraneey’. No one comes out to talk to him, no one calls him to buy, sell, show, whatever he does in life, no one is interested. ‘Claraney’ he and the mystery continues on.
A few minutes later another sound begins. A metal plank meeting another metal. Flip-flops and a short man with bendy knees makes this sharp, dark sound. It is the Pre-Rubbish Truck man. He follows the bamboo fluteman clanking. He proclaims the arrival of the rubbish truck so the security guards take the rubbish out. Blackbirds, scary ravens hear the clanks before everybody else. They come to my balcony eyeing the arrival of the truck. Green parakeets are very busy counting and recounting their little flock . One by one they chirp four times, fly to the wires across the road and chirp again.
While this flying, chirping, counting is keeping heavens busy a big healthy Brahman cow walks slowly swaying her horns. A sweet smell of incense, the bells and morning prayers reach the 7th floor. She stops with her man at the gates and sways her horns, the man receives some money. In the building next door a little sausage dog every morning has the same barking conversation with the cow; the cow doesn’t mind his tone. She takes her time and follows the street where mysteryman, rubbishman, fluteman turn left and disappear. The image of her tail, the sound of the bells stay with me for sometime.
*sun salutation
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