Losing a friend and a world being Lost.

Being bereaved of a friend:

I never have written a eulogy before and so this was a tad bit more difficult than putting my honest confessions in words. Not that this would not be one of my experiences in fact this is something that I hold very close to my heart and have tried to let out numerous times.But who wants to listen to a story that has no hope and a sad end. The kind that leaves you searching for the right words to say , some sensitive people tend to it but not everybody has the patience to give it a thought. You might even end up feeling amused or laughing at the poignancy with which I would tell it at the end of this little description that I have of a dear friend I lost. well I am wondering if i should disclose her name right now, because that would be a little unfair, sometimes disclosing the identity of a person before telling their stories invokes more of prejudice(good or bad..can’t say) then any emotional chord, so for now she would only be a friend of mine

She had lived near my place for a long time in fact we were neighbors but I was oblivious to her presence for quite some time. Until this fine day when she came to my place in search of a little something that she had dropped accidently, that was the first time I ever got a close sight of her. She was a tiny creature, not very beautiful , the most that you would call her was cute.  But there were little things about her that made her a charming little sweetheart , she had a nimble feet, and it seemed that she always hopped , with a certain vivacity. Though she had entered without ringing the doorbell or even  knocking at the gate but it did not seem rude at all, in fact her demeanor was very submissive as she cautiously walked in with her eyes fixed on me and carefully lifted her little belonging and swiftly went back  just as she had entered.

It was amusing to say the least, from that day onwards, I started greeting her more often, to which she would either reply with a bleak voice or turn away shyly. She had always been the reserved kin perhaps due to the fact that Her life was ever as simple as mine. I decided I would try and be a little more than civil and that might just help her be a little less meek and then maybe I could invite her to my place a little more often.

She had a beautiful voice and every morning, soon after sunrise she would practice singing, even if I was in my house I could hear her , She must be used to getting up early because there never was a day when I couldn’t hear the sweet voice while getting ready for school.

Soon we were on good terms, I had actually gone ahead with my plans and tried a little harder to befriend her. Soon enough she started frequenting my place, I loved to share my meals with her, though she never ate much, her serving size was miniscule as compared to mine. Sometimes she would come for a drink of water while playing outside in summer afternoons. There was always some water kept aside for both of us on the outer wall of the verandah, I always leapt for the bottle which she could not drink from so there was a utensil for her. My mother also seemed to be very fond of her, so she was always welcome.

That was till I was ten years or so. Childhood friends, no matter how much you have loved them, spent days with them that make memories that you cherish for the rest of your lives, sometimes lose touch.

So as I grew I lost interest in playing the little games that we used to, running after her, trying to catch her even though I knew she was too fast for me and would fly away even before I could take a step ahead.

 But She was there, still living at the same place going about her own life the way she did before she was noticed. I became neutral towards her singing in the morning , it was more like a daily hum drum . I really did not have the time to appreciate all this while rushing for school. So it went on like this for sometime , a few years I guess. I was too preoccupied with the more relevant things, I never noticed that she moved away.  Mornings were seeming more quiet than usual, not that I caught the change immediately, none of us did. Life went on., when one day my mother remarked that how she never heard her sing for such a long time and how she disappeared I felt  my stomach folding but the very next instant forgot all about it when she mentioned a topic that interested me more.

It was not till an year back when we all realized the reason for her sudden vanishing act , that was when my dad showed me the newspaper report on how the callous, unmonitored and illegal planting signal towers had resulted in the wiping of a whole specie that we knew as the common house bids. ‘The sparrows’

How I miss, the way she sang perched on the tree right outside my home, the way she hopped in the balcony to eat the little pieces that I sneaked out of my meals, the earthen bowl that was filled for her with some water to drink has visits only from the pigeons or the joy birds but no sign of her anywhere around. I remember how sometimes I would scare her away while trying to catch her. The innocent games I played as a child and I wonder how could I along with all other people become so insensitive to her presence and the sudden fall in her visits and all that lead to her extinction from the realms of the cities’ skylines.

Told you, you might mock at this tale, or you might trash me as an absolutely sentimental person with a farfetched idea of mourning the loss of a certain species of birds.  But then read it all over again, omitting the fact that this is the story of a certain avian. Do you not miss the flock ? or has their diminishing not been noticed yet. Try to spot a sparrow the next time you are outdoors and if you find one consider yourself lucky, cause there are hardly any left in the cities. Later you can tell the generations to come about witnessing such species that were plentiful and now have been limited to the inaccessible mountains where soon network providers would dwell and wipe them off the face of the planet. I suggest click them too……. Save them in the frames …  I am not going to suggest garlanding the frame now, cause well then that would  take away the focus from the whole purpose behind the story.

 This story aims at bringing this fact to your notice. All my previous attempts have gone vain ,people are not interested to listening to all these environmental causes. Not that am I calling upon people to turn into environmental activists, I am just trying to sensitize them towards the fast eroding natural resources. While we can’t do anything about the birds that went missing or the bees that are no longer seen but we can certainly do more when it comes to conservation of the a biotic resources such as water or the absolutely indispensable forest resources.

Let’s not lose everything to the trait of insensitivity that dominates the rest of all the human tendencies. Show a little bit of emotion. A bleak ending to today’s confession….. I feel helpless when i come to think of all this. I really do.