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About the cleverness and sagacity of the Indian Crow, I don't have to elaborate...great men from Aesop to Mark Twain dealt with the topic inimitably.
It is well-known that crows steal...and their propensity for stealing is indiscriminate. They steal for the kick of it. Anything they happen to fancy and find challenging is good for them. And the thingummies they steal are often useless to them but very useful to their owners...like a toothbrush. And, after lifting them in their awful beaks, they fly away and drop them in their nests or in some other nook.
This kleptomania of crows finds a metaphor in our Telugu:
"Kaki Buddhi"
Meaning a chap who is addicted to stealing useless things.
One day, soon after my marriage in 1979 and before my wife could properly settle down in the jungle called the IIT KGP campus, I returned home for lunch in our Qrs C1-97 and found my wife in tears. After some probing, I came to know that she saw a crow swoop down in our backyard where the maid was cleaning utensils. And in a lightning movement the KGP crow lifted a tiny stainless steel ghee-dispenser along with its lid and the well-fitting spoon...the entire tackle...and flew away before she or her maid could recover from the shock.
And my wife started crying inconsolably.
I promised her that we would go to Gole Bazaar in the evening and fetch a new kit better than what she lost. But that didn't seem to help. And I was mystified till she leaked it out that the ghee-dispenser the crow lifted was very special to her since it was a wedding gift from her mom who got it from her sister who got it from HER auntie...and she would love to have the very same lost property whatever the cost.
Honeymoon is a weird time and I decided to try my best (or appear to do so) to recover her fond thingummy. Since there were no clues for the crime and since I couldn't very well climb all the trees in our backyard to spot the fugitive crow's nest, I did the next best. Our roof (chath) had no stairs to it and the only way to climb on to it was by several pull-ups...from the cemented water tank to the boundary wall, then on to the parapet, and finally a mighty swing over the 4 ft landing wall.
I was by then an expert in this drill...I was a chain smoker then, and whenever I got disgusted with my slavery to nicotine, I used to promise myself that I would give up the habit then and there, swearing to myself that it would be the very last fag of my life.
And then I would fling the rest of the packet (with its precious contents) on to the roof of C1-97.
And after a couple of hours of groaning, I would decide that one more very very very last fag shouldn't hurt, but by then it would be midnight...and the only way to smoke was to go up and recover the packet...
So, I went up the roof during that lunch break to see if the crow had by chance dropped my wife's property somewhere there. And as luck would have it, I found the entire kit lying scattered on our roof...except the spoon that goes into its hole in the lid.
And brought it down and gifted it to my wife, expecting adulation...but she asked:
"Where is my spoon?"
That shows...
We both went to Gole Bazaar that evening carrying her ghee dispenser with its lid, looking for a shop that sells spoons of all shapes and sizes. After a couple of hours of shop-hopping, we did find a spoon that more or less fitted into its groove.
But my wife was not altogether charmed since the spoon looked brand new while the rest of the kit had an ambiance of a family heirloom.
I tried to take a brick and rub the new spoon vigorously on it to make it dull...like kids used to get shiny new jeans and tried their best to make them 'faded jeans'.
But all I could manage was to make the spoon scratched here and there...
The kit is still there in our kitchen...any technique to make stainless steel lose its shine?
**********************************************************************************************************
About the cleverness and sagacity of the Indian Crow, I don't have to elaborate...great men from Aesop to Mark Twain dealt with the topic inimitably.
It is well-known that crows steal...and their propensity for stealing is indiscriminate. They steal for the kick of it. Anything they happen to fancy and find challenging is good for them. And the thingummies they steal are often useless to them but very useful to their owners...like a toothbrush. And, after lifting them in their awful beaks, they fly away and drop them in their nests or in some other nook.
This kleptomania of crows finds a metaphor in our Telugu:
"Kaki Buddhi"
Meaning a chap who is addicted to stealing useless things.
One day, soon after my marriage in 1979 and before my wife could properly settle down in the jungle called the IIT KGP campus, I returned home for lunch in our Qrs C1-97 and found my wife in tears. After some probing, I came to know that she saw a crow swoop down in our backyard where the maid was cleaning utensils. And in a lightning movement the KGP crow lifted a tiny stainless steel ghee-dispenser along with its lid and the well-fitting spoon...the entire tackle...and flew away before she or her maid could recover from the shock.
And my wife started crying inconsolably.
I promised her that we would go to Gole Bazaar in the evening and fetch a new kit better than what she lost. But that didn't seem to help. And I was mystified till she leaked it out that the ghee-dispenser the crow lifted was very special to her since it was a wedding gift from her mom who got it from her sister who got it from HER auntie...and she would love to have the very same lost property whatever the cost.
Honeymoon is a weird time and I decided to try my best (or appear to do so) to recover her fond thingummy. Since there were no clues for the crime and since I couldn't very well climb all the trees in our backyard to spot the fugitive crow's nest, I did the next best. Our roof (chath) had no stairs to it and the only way to climb on to it was by several pull-ups...from the cemented water tank to the boundary wall, then on to the parapet, and finally a mighty swing over the 4 ft landing wall.
I was by then an expert in this drill...I was a chain smoker then, and whenever I got disgusted with my slavery to nicotine, I used to promise myself that I would give up the habit then and there, swearing to myself that it would be the very last fag of my life.
And then I would fling the rest of the packet (with its precious contents) on to the roof of C1-97.
And after a couple of hours of groaning, I would decide that one more very very very last fag shouldn't hurt, but by then it would be midnight...and the only way to smoke was to go up and recover the packet...
So, I went up the roof during that lunch break to see if the crow had by chance dropped my wife's property somewhere there. And as luck would have it, I found the entire kit lying scattered on our roof...except the spoon that goes into its hole in the lid.
And brought it down and gifted it to my wife, expecting adulation...but she asked:
"Where is my spoon?"
That shows...
We both went to Gole Bazaar that evening carrying her ghee dispenser with its lid, looking for a shop that sells spoons of all shapes and sizes. After a couple of hours of shop-hopping, we did find a spoon that more or less fitted into its groove.
But my wife was not altogether charmed since the spoon looked brand new while the rest of the kit had an ambiance of a family heirloom.
I tried to take a brick and rub the new spoon vigorously on it to make it dull...like kids used to get shiny new jeans and tried their best to make them 'faded jeans'.
But all I could manage was to make the spoon scratched here and there...
The kit is still there in our kitchen...any technique to make stainless steel lose its shine?
**********************************************************************************************************
1 comment:
I don't think crows can wrap their lips around a straw because their beaks are hard unlike for some humans :) Not to be a stickler but the update would have failed I guess:)
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