Cages and Wings
Memory is a strange thing. Every once in a while, it throws up something from your past for re-examination, challenging you to see things in a way you couldn’t before, when it belonged to the world of your present.
Today I remembered my childhood. I remembered a parrot I once had for a pet. I saw flashes of images—flashes of green, flashes of wings. I couldn’t have been older than nine or ten. I do not remember where I got the parrot from, but I remember she was locked up in a tiny cage too small to even stretch her wings in.
I asked my dad to get her a big birdhouse so that she could fly around. He had one made in our own factory. It was four feet high and two feet wide. There were two iron bars running from one wall to the other, where the parrot could sit, and two rings suspended on vertical bars which were welded to the top bar, where the bird could sit and swing. The walls, ceiling, and floor of the cage were made of iron mesh with wide holes so that the bird could climb. It was the best cage a pet parrot had ever seen. People asked us why we had such a huge birdhouse for just one bird, but we maintained that we wanted the best for our pet.
She used to have a jolly good time in her birdhouse, flapping from perch to perch, dangling on the swings, climbing on the meshed walls… I fed her rice every day and gave her chilli treats. She used to love those. There were other weird things that she loved, but my memory is foggy. I had some big impressive name for her, but no one ever used that name, so I don’t even remember it now. Everybody used to call her ‘Thatha’ or ‘Thathamma’, Malayalam for ‘parrot’. Whenever I went to her cage, she used to come near the mesh wall so that I could scratch her head. She even used to peck my finger with her beak, gently most times, but hard if she was hungry.
She was supposed to be a talking parrot, but she never really learnt to talk. Her linguistic ability seemed to be limited to just answering to her name. If we called out ‘Thathamma’, she would scream ‘aaa’ back, opening her beak wide. I don’t know where she learnt that from. But sometimes early in the morning, just when dawn broke, my parents and grandparents used to hear her trying to talk. She only used to do it when nobody else was around, as if she was too shy to practice in front of us. I never used to wake up that early, but my folks said she seemed to be trying to call my name, the pet name that everyone in the family called me. I wouldn’t believe them at first, but I heard it a few times myself. It wasn’t very clear, but it was definitely my name.
After a while, I started feeling guilty about locking her up. I saw other birds in the sky and wondered how it would feel like, wondered how she would feel to be free. I didn’t want to lose my pet, but the guilt nagged at me. One day I went to feed her and paused when I was closing the door. I opened the door wide and walked away. I stood at a distance to watch. She flew down to the open frame and stood at the edge, craning her neck out, looking in all directions. But she didn’t leave. She never went back inside either; she stood at the frame, perched on the boundary line separating familiarity and freedom. After a while, I went back and closed it, afraid that a cat would get in and afraid that I would lose her. My conscience was sated. I had opened the door; she chose not to leave. Also, after that incident, my parents and many other people told me that birds raised in captivity die quickly if they are let out. They said they don’t know how to fend for themselves and find food and water. They said they often get pecked to death by other birds, like crows. So I gave up the idea of freeing her. She didn’t want to leave anyway, and I didn’t want my beloved pet to die in a cruel world she didn’t know. But I still kept leaving the door open when I went to refill and clean her water dish. Sometimes I used to sit near her cage and leave the door open so that she could sit at the edge and watch the world outside, unmarred by metal bars in her view. I knew she wouldn’t leave. She was happy where she was. She just wanted to watch the world from the door at times.
Months later, I walked out of the house and saw another parrot on top of the cage—a large, wild one. My parrot was perched just near the wild parrot, only on the other side of the iron mesh. She was excited and cackling. The wild parrot flew away when it saw me. I think it was a male. But the wild one kept returning when we weren’t nearby. Over the weeks, we saw it several times, and it always flew away when we approached. We laughed about their bird romance.
One fine morning, I woke up and went to feed my pet. I tickled her beak and gave her a chilli. I saw that the water dish was dirty and went to change it. I left the door open as usual, out of habit. I whistled a tune and changed the water. I walked back towards her birdhouse from the tap and was shocked to see her wobbling in the air two feet above my head, flapping her wings frantically, unsure of their full use. I dropped the water dish and ran after her, screaming at her to get back in the cage. I tried to catch her, but she flew higher every time I tried. She perched on top of the car for a moment and then flew to a nearby tree as I ran after her. Finally, she opened her wings wide and pushed at the air with her full might. And in the flash of an eye, she was gone, soaring through the air between the treetops, flapping furiously and purposefully. I walked through the woods, crying for her to come back, till my parents came looking for me and took me back.
I worried and worried every day. I wondered who would feed her. I worried if she would be able to find water and whether the crows would peck her to death. I wondered if the wild parrot which used to visit her would help her. That parrot, how I hated it. Before it came along, she was happy in the house we built for her. Now she was gone, with no one to care for her.
In the next few days, my grandpa told me he heard her cry in the morning from the nearby woods. He said there was an old tree with a hole in the side, and that she might be there. I walked around the woods, calling for her. The tree he told me about was too tall for me to see into the hole, but I hoped she was there. One time I thought I saw her, flying out of a tree and then back in. But there were crows there too. The days went on, and we stopped hearing anything. I walked through the woods every day but never saw anything.
My family said she must have flown away, looking for food and water. There aren’t many parrots in that small wood. There was also the dark possibility that no one said out loud. She might have starved or gotten pecked. There was no way to find out.
I grieved for the loss of my pet till time made my memory foggy and my life filled with other concerns. Over the years, I forgot about the parrot completely. And now, years later, a conversation with a friend about freedom made me remember her again. To my surprise, life and experiences have changed how I feel about the same incident. After these many years, my pet parrot is dead for sure. If she hadn’t flown away and had stayed in the birdhouse, I would still be remembering a bird that died long ago. The difference is that I would have been remembering a life which was spent shackled to the ground, unable to take off.
I walked out the door of my house and looked at the treetops in the wood through which she had made her break for freedom all those years ago. I imagined how it would have felt, flying into the unknown, with just the thrill of flight and vague hope, not knowing where food, shelter, or security would come from. She must have been afraid, but she still flew.
Today I see triumph in what I saw as tragedy all those years ago. Today I understand what I didn’t understand back then—that a cage is a cage, even if it is made of love. Life is not about knowing where the next meal comes from, or being comforted by familiarity. Life is about hope, and courage. My little parrot had it, even though it took me years to figure the same out for myself.
Wings are made to fly. Who are we to put bars on the horizon?