The trouble began with a Hindi film song playing on the mobile phone of a human.
“Ek daal par tota bole, ek daal par maina,
door-door baithe hain lekin pyaar toh phir bhi hai na…”
(On one branch sits the parrot, on another sits the myna,
they may be sitting far apart, but surely there is love between them…)
A pair of parrots sitting on the balcony railing heard it. The male parrot stopped eating the Manila tamarind in his beak. The female parrot stopped preening her feathers. They looked at each other.
“Did he say, tota maina and pyaar?” she asked
The male parrot swallowed a big bite of the fruit in his beak.
“Humans have made a weird song about us?” She narrowed her eyes.
“Apparently.”
They both looked around suspiciously. There was no myna anywhere. Parrots are generally not insecure birds. They are loud, colourful and extremely sure of themselves. They believe the entire neighbourhood is their property and that every human within shouting distance is there primarily to serve them sunflower seeds. But the song had planted a dangerous idea. The male parrot looked towards the neem tree.
“Is there a myna on that tree?”
“Are you looking for a myna?” she stared at him.
“No!”
“You hesitated.”
“I was thinking.”
“About a myna?”
“No. About birds in general.”
“Which birds? Name one.”
“Crow.”
“Another.”
“Pigeon.”
“Another.”
He panicked.
“Myna.”
There was absolute silence. The female parrot flew three inches closer.
“Aha.”
“I only said the name because you asked me to name a bird.”
“Of course.”
The next morning she began watching the neem tree. Nothing.
The following morning, still nothing. On the third morning, a myna landed on a branch. The male parrot froze. She froze. The myna looked at them. Then it looked at the ground. Then it hopped twice and began eating something.
“That’s her,” whispered the female parrot.
“Who?”
“The myna.”
“How do you know?”
“She has a face.”
“All mynas have faces.”
“This one has that face.”
The male parrot was now nervous. The myna chirped. The female parrot turned sharply towards her husband.
“She spoke to you.”
“She didn’t.”
“She looked at you and chirped.”
“She looked at the ground and chirped.”
“Don’t defend her.”
The male parrot decided silence was safest. Soon, the story travelled through the neighbourhood. Someone said the parrot was in love with a myna. An aunty bird, who had never met a bird she couldn’t marry off, announced that the two must have been separated by their families. Nobody knew why. Nobody asked. The myna certainly had no idea about what was happening. She was busy looking for breakfast. One afternoon she landed on the same branch as the male parrot. The female parrot saw them. She flew over immediately.
“What are you doing?”
The myna blinked.
“Eating.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“On this tree?”
The myna looked around.
“Is the tree yours?”
The female parrot opened her beak and then closed it.
The male parrot flew over.
“Actually, this is my partner.”
The myna looked at him. “Congratulations.” And flew away.
The couple sat silently.
After a while, the female parrot said, “I like her.”
The male parrot looked shocked.
“You do?”
“Yes. She rejected you.”
“I wasn’t proposing!”
“Exactly. That’s what I like about her.”
That evening the song played again from somebody’s phone.
“Ek daal par tota bole, ek daal par maina…”
The parrots listened. The male parrot sighed.
“You know, perhaps the song isn’t about us.”
She nodded.
“Perhaps.”
“The tota and maina are simply sitting on two different branches.”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps they don’t even know each other.”
“Very likely.”
“Perhaps they are just birds.”
She looked at him fondly.
He puffed up his feathers. “So… no romance?”
She smiled.
“Not between the tota and the myna.”
Then she moved closer to him. The male parrot smiled and immediately looked towards the neem tree.
“I think that myna was flirting with me.”
She picked up a dry stick and threw it at him. He flew away.
Love is complicated.
Story and text by Prerna Jain.
