The way of the owl

IT takes all sorts, luckily, otherwise the concrete jungle would be an even duller place.

For instance I like my dictators draconian and oppressive, flaunting their true colours and stomping on critics, while others find comfort in sham democracy-to-go with a side order of freedom. The events of the last few days have cheered me up no end but some people I know, and respect, are visibly despondent.

Such is the way of the world. Some people can’t sit still while I can think of nothing better short of being horizontal. I prefer the lights soft but some of my best friends are uneasy until another lamp or two is switched on. Often they don’t even wait for the host to alter the ambience.

The point is, if you haven’t guessed it by now, that everyone is different, not necessarily better or worse. We in the land of the righteous can do with fewer value judgements.

So I suppose there are those who like seeing nature put in its proper place by the supreme creation. Me, I was happier when hundreds and sometimes thousands of parrots put on a glorious show every day at sunset, swarming and squawking all over the place in a city that still had plenty of fruit trees.

The owl that lived among the junk on the roof of my parents’ place and with whom I had, literally, a nodding acquaintance is no more, like my father. That much is natural. But I wish the next generation could have taken its place.

Maybe that wasn’t possible in a city of smoke, floodlights, generators and shopping plazas. The owl is gone, the parrots are on the way and I consider myself lucky if I see a houdh-houdh every six months. The tiny woodpeckers are still around but the larger variety of old is almost non-existent.

I haven’t come across a ladybug in a long time, even in the rainy season. A butterfly now is a rare sighting. Nor, try as I may, have I seen a monitor lizard or a snake or a chameleon. They are all sorely missed. Thank the lord for the sparrows and the mynahs and the crows and the kites — and the odd parrot — that still honour us with their presence.

Ponds in KDA and in PECHS once teemed with fish, and the fossils of ancient sea creatures (or so we believed and we may have been right) could be seen embedded in rocks where the barren hillocks once stood but what is now the navy’s maritime museum. If so inclined you could traipse, over hills and gullies, from Amir Khusro road all the way close to the airport and watch the planes take off. We took loafing seriously.

This was in the early seventies, not some prehistoric time.

The flame of the forest, the ‘gul mohar’, was everywhere. Though not delicious, its buds just before they opened — timing was everything — were salty to the taste and made for a handy snack on a lean afternoon. We never bought guavas, or mangoes for that matter, but somehow in season they were never in short supply.

Such was the sport of my privileged childhood. Some of us thought nothing of bicycling six miles to a cricket or hockey match, and why not. Sharea Faisal, all new and wide and largely deserted in the afternoon, was a cyclist’s paradise.

I’m told kids these days have it better and I readily believe it. While we had to pore over individual frames in an 8mm reel with flashlights, they can just Google the damn thing. Everything changes, nothing remains the same and you don’t have to sit under a banyan tree to know what’s what. It might help but banyans are hard to come by in this day and age.

Enough said, for now.

imalik@dawn.com