Saffron and Abigail
Today marks week six of relocation from Houston to Karachi. As
you are well aware by now, I have been writing the Karachi-Houston diaries.
Through these compilations I try to compare and contrast what is in Karachi
with what was in Houston. I’m like that. Writing analogically helps me make
sense of my present and past life.
Acknowledgment: This article was first published by the Houston Inner Looper Newspaper (Dec. 2013). Photos kindly provided by Dr. Ansul Noor.
Today, my routine
muse (in my head and heart) was missing in action. Normally she would assist in
helping me focus on something intriguing to write about from both the Karachi
and Houston perspectives.
So I asked the child
instead.
“Today, what should
I write about?”
I expected either no
comment or something noncommittal from the child, since she would seldom take
me seriously.
But this time the
reply came promptly and without hesitation.
“Today write about
Saffron and Abigail!”
Saffron and Abigail
are not exotic condiments. Nor are they administrative staff at my workplace in
Karachi.
They are two fairy
friends of Tinker Bell, living happily ever after in Peter Pan’s Never Never
Land. However, in my reality, Saffron and Abigail are kites living in Karachi.
The kind of feathered kites that breathe, fly and occasionally poop on you. The
duo perches on metallic pipes that poke out of the apartment building across
from the one that is my temporary abode in Karachi. We distinguish Saffron from
Abigail by their perches. The one situated on the left (with respect to me) is
always Saffron. Their positioning on the pipes is invariably the same. They
tend to locate themselves on those pipes day in and day out – but primarily in
the evenings and nighttime. I believe that during daylight hours Saffron and
Abigail are doing what kites are meant to do best.
A few weeks back the
child christened the two kites Saffron and Abigail. Hence her recollection was
incisive especially given that we were standing on the balcony of the said
apartment where all the recent entries of the Karachi-Houston diaries were
conceived. Furthermore, we happened to be looking at the birds right then and
hence that may have had something to do with it. I had no idea whether Saffron
and Abigail was a pair – male or female? Were the names appropriate? It didn’t
seem to matter to the child, so I left at it that.
Birds
are mesmerizing creatures. I happen to be a keen bird watcher. In fact, you can
say that I find them more interesting than anything else in the living world,
second only to human beings. While in Houston, I would make trips to state
parks just to observe migratory birds. However, the brief trips would never
enable me to befriend any particular ones that I could keep watching for long
periods of time.
Relocating to
Karachi saddened me somewhat because I knew that I couldn’t frequent parks here
in which I could watch birds. However, what surprised me was the fact that
Karachi, irrespective of being a concrete, volatile, not-very-green jungle, was
a bird menagerie of sorts. There are scores of birds in the city. Birds, that
enable hours of happy observation. Different bird shapes, colors, sounds,
flying techniques, height at which flight occurs, independent or collective
flight, and so on. There is a lot that one can learn from feathered fellow
travelers.
In the fifteen years
I spent in Houston I never came across the likes of Saffron and Abigail. There
was Jonathan the seagull that I met in Boston and then again in Houston, but
that happened to be the only time I had an interaction with a named bird. Here,
in Karachi, I had already been acquainted with a diversity of named birds.
Perhaps that is a major difference between the birds in Houston and those in
Karachi - the latter are more likely to generate writings in their honor.
Today,
therefore, I pay homage to my avian friends in Karachi – to the large regal
ones like Saffron and Abigail, the scruffy discordant ones like crows and
sparrows, the small mellifluous ones like the koels, and a few others that defy
nomenclature by a non-expert like me. Saffron and Abigail may really not be
kites – instead, they may be eagles or falcons, says my mind. But since I am
not an ornithologist, I have no way of telling them apart. Does it matter? When
the child tells you to write about Saffron and Abigail then that’s what you do.
And you do so irrespective of distinguishing between species or gender.
[from the Karachi-Houston Diaries]
Acknowledgment: This article was first published by the Houston Inner Looper Newspaper (Dec. 2013). Photos kindly provided by Dr. Ansul Noor.
Just such a cute article.....we all have a child hiding somewhere inside of us, don't we? Birds fascinate me most, because they can peek above the clouds. The freedom of flight is what the human race will pine for eternally. On a more earthly note, birds are just very interesting creatures filled with curiosity and uncanny navigation skills....keep penning!
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