I noticed from the last couple of days that a pair of pigeons kept on surveying the entire house and doing reconnaissance. Initially, I could not figure out their purpose. But as I kept on monitoring their movements, I found that they are actually looking for a safe place where they could build their nest and lay eggs-- the offspring.
Birds by default are the tenants of the sky. But they do need a physical thing or place where they could build their tangible nest, preferably a safer one. While the human civilization has conceptualized rent, the birds and many other creatures of Nature pay their rent in wonder.
When they finalized the room Chhazza to build their nest, I did not chase them away, and I behaved in a way to make them at ease. The male pigeon started collecting twigs, straw, stray feathers—each piece carried in the beak with the precision of an architect.
When they completed building their nest, the female pigeon sat there overnight. I was thinking what exactly she could be doing that the whole day she did not move. But the next when she was out for around 10-15 minues, I peered through the chhazza to discover one silver white egg in the nest. Interestingly, the next day the female pigeon laid another egg, so now there are two eggs, as you can see from the shots that I have captured.
The female pigeon is sitting low over the nest, making her body into a feathered bowl to incubate her eggs, and I think this process would continue for about 18 days, when the hatching process shall begin.
This entire process is a demonstration of continuity. This is where the philosophy of life rises into prominence. While humans talk about possession, convenience, inheritance, security, bla bla bla......Birds and many other creatures talk about continuity; their existence is the argument, nothing else.
I stay in a rented accommodation, I pay the rent to the landlord. My balcony is not mine. From a deeper perspective, the balcony does not belong to the landlord either; it is borrowed and transformed from Mother Earth. The pigeon does not pay rent-- The pigeons remind me that possession is a human delusion. They build where they land, love where they perch, and when the fledglings take wing, they will leave no forwarding address. No nostalgia, no mortgage. Just the next............the next egg, the next sky. And that is continuity.
Humans are the accidental landlord. Humans should not forget that continuity also brings change; what they think as ownership is also ephemeral in the timescale of evolution. Nature has its own pace to transform, that is why Humans should act as trustee rather than as absolute owners of something that they possess.
In a world obsessed with borders, rent, ownership, inheritance, and bills, the pigeons remind me that belonging is not about deeds or doors. It is about showing up, day after day, to warm what cannot yet warm itself.
To be continued.......
Thank you.
🙏🙏🙏
| Detailed Info | Description |
|---|---|
| Device | Redmi 7, Xiomi |
| Location | Bargarh, Odisha, India |
This is my entry to Phonography Contest- 86 by @untilwelearn
Thank you.
Original Photography using my Smartphone
