An obituary to Majestic Mansion:Continued...

The Pigeons

I found them a lot in Hyderabad, like crows in Calcutta. But unlike the crows, these pigeons are really harmless and gentle in nature. Majestic Mansion had a plenty of them. A group of pigeons stayed just the other side of the glass window which I could not open due to their presence. I coudn't even put on the lights of my room in the night. These pigeons generally treat a portion of our balcony as their maternity ward as well. They did not mind either to enter into our rooms if the balcony-door was open. It was so funny to watch them roaming around in the room, which recalled me, the way my grandfather used to walk with his hands folded behind, flashing an attitude of wise and composure.

But I’d done something awful to one of them for what I still feel ashamed of myself. We had a big, open water filled drum in the balcony. And these pigeons used to stand on its brim and sipped water from the drum. On one such day one unlucky fellow fell down inside the drum. When I came to the balcony, I saw it was trying to come out of the water. I just watched but didn’t help the bird as I thought it would come out of its own. I went back to my room. This was happened in the afternoon. In the evening, Debu, one of my roommates came to the home and noticed that the pigeon was still in the drum. He took the bird out of it. It was shivering in cold and almost half-dead. Debu tried his best to save the poor bird by warming it up. We all tried but it was too late. The bird died or rather killed by my carelessness.