Hello friends,
More than 150 people now receive the Easy But Hard series. Thank you for the continued support. Please share this with your friends if you like the stories :)
Today’s story is of a schoolboy who befriends a bird that visits his house every day. What happens when the bird goes missing one day? Let’s find out!
⌚Reading time = 8 minutes.
The familiar stranger
The smell of the cooking curry or the aroma of the flipping rotis did not affect Shubham's attention. The constant buzzing of the exhaust fan was touching his ears, but the sound did not register in his brain. As he entered the kitchen, he looked towards the window in front of the gas stove.
"Go get me some potatoes from the store," his mother said as she felt his feet walking towards her. She had to turn around to grab his attention.
"It is three days in a row now! This is too much!" Shubham screamed. "Why do you need them again?"
"Just go get them from the store. There's money on top of the fridge."
Shubham walked back towards the refrigerator with his lips pressing against each other. It was only last month since his hand had started reaching the top of the fridge. Though he would usually jump to the top excitedly, today he just stretched his right arm to get the money. He took a grocery bag sitting on a table beside the fridge and started walking towards the front door.
Shubham walked to the tiny grocery store near his house. As the shopkeeper handed over a bag of potatoes, he extended some candies too. Shubham usually got a candy or two with whatever he was buying, but today was different. He rejected the offer at once, put a twenty rupees note on the counter, and started walking back towards home.
His friend, his beloved friend had not visited home today. Shubham was so fond of this friend that he would come running after school to be on time in the kitchen. His mother used to flip rotis on the pan around 1.00 pm, around the same time Shubham came back from school. One roti and one slice of any fruit depending on the season was all this friend needed.
The routine was set a year ago, when, on a warm day a crow came cawing at the kitchen window. Seeing the heat outside and the torment it would be throwing poor birds into, his mother put a bowl of water outside the window. The crow, delighted, started to visit their home regularly, and Shubham’s mother was happy to lend him some water.
One day, as she was flipping rotis, she saw the crow still cawing despite having finished the water in the small bowl. She kept half a roti for the crow on the window's edge. Shubham observed as the crow pecked at the roti. Even though his mother had a strict no-pet policy at home, she started getting used to the crow.
Soon, the crow started acknowledging Shubham’s presence in the kitchen. It started accepting a roti from Shubham's hands once in a while, increasing his circle of friends from Shubham's mother to one more person.
It was a week ago when Shubham was delayed as his school bus broke down. As a result, he got delayed in reaching home by more than an hour. The disappointment was so intense that he refused to get off the bus when it reached home. It took the bus driver more than five minutes to convince Shubham to step down.
As he came out, knowing that the bird must have flown away by now, he gently picked up the gate knob and entered the house in silence. As opposed to the usual days when he would hastily chuck shoes out of his legs in random directions, he quietly sat on the only seat in the verandah to untie the shoelaces. He took sufficient time to take his socks off while staring at the kitchen door from where emerged the faint aroma of Rajmah-Chawal.
As he pushed his shoes properly in the shoe rack, he heard the familiar cawing. It was easily distinguishable from others due to its short length and high pitch. Shubham's feet didn’t need any other calling as they raced towards the kitchen.
The happiness on his face confirmed the bond of their friendship. Not that they had any common interests to talk about, but a relationship of trust for each other and a longing to see each other every day at the same time had emerged.
"Mumma, can we make a nest for the crow?" Shubham asked after the bird flew away.
"Haven't you heard?"
"About what?"
"That crows’ nests are hijacked by cuckoos."
"What?"
"Yeah, crows do all the hard work to build the nests and cuckoos use those nests. So, if we are building one, our little friend will be using it rarely."
"Oh, okay. But if a cuckoo doesn’t see the nest, there is no question of it using the nest, right?"
The mother nodded, seeing Shubham had already convinced himself about the work. “Might as well let the boy learn about nests and how birds build them,” she thought.
"But promise me you won't create a mess in the house. Otherwise, I will shred the nest to pieces. Okay?"
Shubham started working. Every day, once he came from school and was done seeing his friend, he would gather twigs from here and there. One-by-one, he started assembling the twigs and making a structure out of them. He started telling his friend about the new house tailor-made for the crow's comfort. This house would never be washed out by rains, no audacious cuckoo would dare to come close to it, no sun would be able to destroy it as it would be under the ceiling of the verandah. The spot was perfect for making a nest.
Today, the nest was ready for the crow.
After returning from the grocery store, Shubham peeped out of the kitchen window as usual but did not find his friend. He waited for almost an hour, but the crow did not come. He walked out of the house to view if the crow was nearby. No.
Something needed to be done. He decided it was time for Shubham to step out of his home and search for it. Maybe the crow was waiting for him. He walked for hours before he was sweating and thirsty. “Maybe it is sick and couldn’t come today, it'll definitely come tomorrow," he uttered and started walking back.
But when he was walking back towards home, he saw a large flock of crows gathered around an electricity pole. His first reaction was to not heed them, thinking they must be after the odd rat they had hunted. But on getting closer, he found out that they had gathered to mourn the death of one of them. Shubham's heart skipped a beat.
He went closer to find that all of them looking exactly similar to each other. He couldn’t recognize any of their cawing – all of them different from the familiar short bursts he had heard over the past year. His eyes had already widened and his breathing intensified. His friend had most likely decided to leave him to go on a journey alone. Shubham stood shocked for some time but then started on his journey back home, convincing himself of the reality and to prepared to announce it to his worried mother.
He reached home with tears already slipping down his cheek. He told his mother of the crow's death to which she asked the logical question - "How did it die?"
Though it was unclear to Shubham, his mother realized the answer when she heard where the crows had gathered. Among the many other difficulties created for birds around the city, electrical wiring was one of the most common causes of bird deaths. It was not uncommon for birds to get entangled in the wires.
"I think..." Shubham uttered.
"It is one of the cables that go overhead, most probably. But are you sure it was our friend?"
"Yeah, none of the others had the same cawing as our friend."
Shubham's mother sat down at the dining table for a long time. Her expressionless face made it tough to comprehend the feelings going through her mind. Her eyes scanned the empty wall. Her face had turned unusually pale. Though she had seen several people die in her lifetime, the grief this time was different. This friend expected only the bits of roti and fruits from her without complaining about anything.
Shubham placed his left hand on her shoulder as she put her hand over his. Though the two tried to console each other, they were sure that their hearts now had an irreparable dent. Would anyone else be able to reduce the pain caused by this dent? No one could, they knew.
A few days later, Shubham saw a cuckoo occupy the nest he built. Although he thought the nest would not be discoverable to other birds, the cuckoo had found it nevertheless.
If you liked reading this story, do check out the previous 16 stories in the Easy But Hard series here.
If you have any feedback (good or bad) on this or the previous stories, please reply and let me know.
Thanks for reading :)
Hemant