Expression Of Love

A pair of doves come around the charpoy where my mother-in-law is sitting with her ailing body and follow some pigeons and sparrows. It is her daily routine to feed those birds. She has a container filled with some rice, maize and mustard seeds and she scatters the supply when the birds come near to her. Since it is hard for her to move around with a weak and aging body, it is her pastime to feed these birds and a calf. When other members of the family are away she talks to them as if they understand her language.

So was the case with the 90 year old lady Maryam when she had no one around her to listen to her stories of how she escaped from Iran to Australia on charge of being a Baha’i follower. She used to feed Magpies that came to her front yard, murmuring a mixture of Persian and English words.

This is not something that can only be seen with women that are running their final laps; I also found a middle aged lady who was deeply in love with her cockatoo. She said that she had been keeping the bird for the past 25 years and she was boasting of the longevity of the bird as it outlasts the total love life of her five lovers. “This birdie, my Wallie, knows all my secrets. She knows who I was with for how long and how I got dumped and for what reasons.”

Unfortunately, I got a call one day at midnight from that friend of mine. She was wailing and she said in her

trembling voice, “My Wallie died.” I was perplexed to hear that. Though I said some words of comfort to her I was not sure what to do after that. The lady with the bird did not come to work for three days and I with other friends raised some money to buy a bouquet and a card to be delivered to her home. It was hard for me to understand how a person can be in love with a bird so much.

After a week or so, she asked me to visit her home to see the funeral site of her loving bird. She led me to the backyard of her home and a large flower vase was filled with flowers where she had laid her Wallie. With a choked voice, she mumbled some words and I added some to show my support.

The third example may be quite exceptional in our context but the similarity I found among my mother-in-law, Maryam and my cockatoo-loving friend was that people cannot survive without expressing their love. At a young age, they generally have their children around them and it is not difficult for them to pour love to them. As time passes, children grow up and start leaving home to explore the world so that they can build their own families, their own lives.

 Once the house full of children’s incessant noise becomes quiet; to get rid of loneliness the ageing people who are left behind may turn to animals or birds for love. This may make it easier for them to cope with the reality that even though their children are not with them forever they can survive by finding a way to express their love.

(Published in an English Daily The Rising Nepal on Friday, Nov. 24, 2017 ) 

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