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Mark Twain didn't stay long enough in India to observe all the fascinating features of the Indian Crow.
Everyone knows its stealth. As a small boy with a piece of idli in my hands, I was more than once beguiled by our Muthukur crows. One second the idli was there in my hands and the next it would be in the crow's beak. The crow was swift, coming from behind and lifting its grub tidily without as much as touching my hands.
The crow revels in its stealth. But like every thief, the Indian Crow is also wary...very very wary.
It was mid-May in 1994 when my Father passed away in Gudur. And I, along with my six sisters, were participating in the elaborate rituals that were supposed to transport Father to Heaven.
Everything went on well till the last day when our Pundit asked me to make a series of pindas...morsels of rice laced with ghee, dal, vadas and payas perhaps. After I made them, our Pundit asked us to go up to our parapet on the first floor and place them on the low wall so that crows (which alone dared the midday heat) would pounce on them and gobble them up...crows are specific to this final send-off. If crows don't touch the morsels, it is a bad omen and Father is supposed to be displeased with our rituals...
So, we went up and placed the morsels on the parapet. Within minutes, a dozen crows spotted the morsels from afar and flew in. But, although they sighted the morsels, none of them came forward to eat them up. All of them were cawing in a cacophony but perched on different branches of the couple of trees around.
My sisters started shouting:
"Caw! Caw! Caw!"
inviting them, but they didn't budge. They would look at the morsels and then at us and keep cawing. One of my sisters suggested that the crows would gobble up the pindas as soon as the one amongst us that Father was fondest would touch them. Everyone went forward and touched them by turns, but nothing happened.
My mom was puzzled why we were getting delayed for the next part of the ritual...Punditjee was hungry...
And then she said that crows are suspicious by nature if anyone offers them food ex-gratia, and wouldn't dare touch it till they are left alone. So, all of us hid in the room beside the wall watching what happens next peeping through a window.
Very soon, one crow landed on the parapet beside the pindas and tentatively pecked at one of them while the others were watching keenly. And after they were assured that the pindas dealt by gps were not laced with poison, the rest of them swooped down and in half a minute finished the job.
Father reached Heaven pronto...
I guess the first one was a 'helper' since I recalled this joke:
An electrician and his helper came up for repairing a pole-defect. And the helper held up the ladder for the electrician to go up. As he was doing his job, a couple of wires fell down on the ground and the electrician called to his helper to come forward and touch one of the two wires, which he did happily.
Then the electrician howled:
"Now! Don't touch the other...it is the LIVE"
Anyway crows love stealing but not begging or standing in line for doles...I guess it is a matter of prestige to them...there is no challenge in ex-gratia doles.
Sherlock Holmes said much the same thing in his memoirs...had he not turned to crime detection, he would have become a criminal himself, for the kick it gives.
Indian crows seem to have no enemies. They are not hunted for their flesh by Hindus, Muslims or Christians as Mark Twain said. Maybe tribals eat them, I don't know. They have no natural enemies. In a way the Indian Crow is a self-preserving autonomous species. So they live long. Very few see a crow die of natural causes. The few dead crows I saw at KGP were felled down by the high-tension wires. And the rest of them give their dead companion a warm send-off by a tumultuous cacophony.
So there is this metaphor in Telugu:
"What is the use of a long life if it isn't productive...even the crow lives a thousand years!"
I don't agree ;)
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Mark Twain didn't stay long enough in India to observe all the fascinating features of the Indian Crow.
Everyone knows its stealth. As a small boy with a piece of idli in my hands, I was more than once beguiled by our Muthukur crows. One second the idli was there in my hands and the next it would be in the crow's beak. The crow was swift, coming from behind and lifting its grub tidily without as much as touching my hands.
The crow revels in its stealth. But like every thief, the Indian Crow is also wary...very very wary.
It was mid-May in 1994 when my Father passed away in Gudur. And I, along with my six sisters, were participating in the elaborate rituals that were supposed to transport Father to Heaven.
Everything went on well till the last day when our Pundit asked me to make a series of pindas...morsels of rice laced with ghee, dal, vadas and payas perhaps. After I made them, our Pundit asked us to go up to our parapet on the first floor and place them on the low wall so that crows (which alone dared the midday heat) would pounce on them and gobble them up...crows are specific to this final send-off. If crows don't touch the morsels, it is a bad omen and Father is supposed to be displeased with our rituals...
So, we went up and placed the morsels on the parapet. Within minutes, a dozen crows spotted the morsels from afar and flew in. But, although they sighted the morsels, none of them came forward to eat them up. All of them were cawing in a cacophony but perched on different branches of the couple of trees around.
My sisters started shouting:
"Caw! Caw! Caw!"
inviting them, but they didn't budge. They would look at the morsels and then at us and keep cawing. One of my sisters suggested that the crows would gobble up the pindas as soon as the one amongst us that Father was fondest would touch them. Everyone went forward and touched them by turns, but nothing happened.
My mom was puzzled why we were getting delayed for the next part of the ritual...Punditjee was hungry...
And then she said that crows are suspicious by nature if anyone offers them food ex-gratia, and wouldn't dare touch it till they are left alone. So, all of us hid in the room beside the wall watching what happens next peeping through a window.
Very soon, one crow landed on the parapet beside the pindas and tentatively pecked at one of them while the others were watching keenly. And after they were assured that the pindas dealt by gps were not laced with poison, the rest of them swooped down and in half a minute finished the job.
Father reached Heaven pronto...
I guess the first one was a 'helper' since I recalled this joke:
An electrician and his helper came up for repairing a pole-defect. And the helper held up the ladder for the electrician to go up. As he was doing his job, a couple of wires fell down on the ground and the electrician called to his helper to come forward and touch one of the two wires, which he did happily.
Then the electrician howled:
"Now! Don't touch the other...it is the LIVE"
Anyway crows love stealing but not begging or standing in line for doles...I guess it is a matter of prestige to them...there is no challenge in ex-gratia doles.
Sherlock Holmes said much the same thing in his memoirs...had he not turned to crime detection, he would have become a criminal himself, for the kick it gives.
Indian crows seem to have no enemies. They are not hunted for their flesh by Hindus, Muslims or Christians as Mark Twain said. Maybe tribals eat them, I don't know. They have no natural enemies. In a way the Indian Crow is a self-preserving autonomous species. So they live long. Very few see a crow die of natural causes. The few dead crows I saw at KGP were felled down by the high-tension wires. And the rest of them give their dead companion a warm send-off by a tumultuous cacophony.
So there is this metaphor in Telugu:
"What is the use of a long life if it isn't productive...even the crow lives a thousand years!"
I don't agree ;)
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Dear Sir,
ReplyDeleteThere is a tribe in West Bengal named "kakmara" (crow hunter) who eat crows. And interestingly some claim that they came from Andhra Pradesh some 200 years ago! I have read some stories based on them but can't recall now the name of the author. With a little google search I found an interesting link with some information about this tribe --
http://twfindia.in/offtrackDetail1_16.10.05.php
with best regards
suman