The Indian Crow

This crow comes to my uncles place in mumbai every morning asking to be fed by hand. He comes at the same time punctually and then uncle feeds him a biscuit or two. It wasnt possible to click the moment where he actually takes it from the hand, also as can be seen from his expression he was wary of my presence. It shows that even the crows in mumbai aren't far behind in smartness compared to their human counterparts.
:-)

At one time South Mumbai used to be home to white pigeons, thousands of them literally. As kids when we visited relatives in mumbai the visit was just another trip for the grownups, For us it was something like Alice in wonderland, the rush of Mumbai was gigantic in contrast to the idle afternoons in Panaji. Then after meeting all the relatives and their friends and making friemds of our own, then on returning back there was a mumbai hangover. Most time was spent in talking about mumbai and its niceties the next few days one felt like a tourist to goa and a resident to Mumbai, and the only thoughts were about when the city could be visited again, but this line of thought only brought the realization that such an endeavour was subject to the whims of the grownups and that another visit would take ages.

The infinite line of second hand booksellers at Flora Fountain, local trains and the wide streets and the food vendors and the ancient establishments in the British stone buildings were delightful but one knew these things couldnt be possible in Panaji, also one couldnt see anything that reminded one about them. There were no booksellers at all, no cows tied by the roadside to feed. The only thing that irked me was the the trademark white pigeons or rather the absence of them. In Goa one could only see the regular, standard issue blue colored pigeons with no sign of the classic white birds, i couldnt find a single one of these in Goa. The blue (or whatever color it is supposed to be) pigeons were very heartbreaking.

I concluded therefore that perhaps the fair birds have their own standards to keep and inhabit only the cosmopolitan cities, and I was right for this habit of the Kabutars to stick to the cities with the limelight has paid heavy dividends. These pretty birds that were only seen momentarily in ancient hindi war movies as lowly messengers, slowly increased in standard to be the courier service for Bhagyashree in "Kabutar Ja" then after doing item numbers like "chadh gaya upar re" song in Dalaal the bird got lucky in "Lucky kabutar" and last year Sonam kapoor was being compared to it in "Massakali Massakali", what a great journey their darker friends preferred to stay in the smaller towns and the only scenes they get are as extras in which they have to peck at the grains on the road in large numbers to portray mumbai.

Now whenevr i visit Mumbai I miss the white pigeons, for they seem to have dissapeared from here too, outnumbered by the lower classed variety. Maybe soon we shall see them in hollywood movies. Adeus.