Great Joy in Small things.

In the last one week the dictum simple things bring great joy was emphasised and reemphasised,like a drilling machine going grrrngg.grrrng.

Was walking with my daughter to the super market and just passed by a tree in the perimeter of my complex. It would not be much taller than say 6 feet but dense neverthless due to the constant pruning done by the overzealous gardener keen to retain his job! It would look more like a globe of green mounted on a thin leg with varicose veins.

Anyhow,there i was passing by this tree and i heard a sweet chirp. It was more like kwee..kwee. I was curious.The sound was unfamiliar and sure it was not a sparrow. Down here where i live there are plenty of sparrows which sat on a dhow and came along with the Mynahs and overstayed just like the compatriots in Dubai. It could not be a myna too as the long shrill tweet of the mynah is too familiar even to my untrained ears. So i decided to stop and investigate.

First I found a few thin dry twigs resembling more like brown wires jutting out of the bushy green globe.Inside i could still hear the jabbering Kwee Kwee and lot of hustling noice. I went closer to peep. The tempo of the Kwees became faster and agitated like my child's words which picks up tempo when she is about to be negated! In the end she gave up the game and came out in all her beauty and regally perched on a window sill above to grant me a glorious audience.

It was a Bulbul with the a shocking red crown of hair and a bluish grey beak to match her feathers. Just as i saw this and thought wow! what a sighting it flapped its wing to fly away revealing a shocking blue feather underneath.

It makes me think, all the gizmos and gadgets laptops and projectors, cars and houses had not given the simple joy this bulbul could impact on me. The rest of the week i went Kwee Kwee.
Krishnamachari Santhanam