Tina hunted for birds. With her eyes. She was an armchair birdwatcher. Her field of observation was restricted to the trees outside the two windows in her apartment bedroom. So far, she had seen the ubiquitous crows, mynahs, cuckoos, pigeons and the occasional rufous treepie. But she was in for a treat soon. She was travelling to the western part of the country where, she read, she would see bee-eaters, barbets, larks and lapwings, to name just a few. In preparation, she had bought the cheapest pair of binoculars. They would do – she could see the number plates of the motorcycles parked two doors away, and in the pantry of an office in the next building, which she could see through the leaves of the young guava tree, the staff heated up idlis, samosas, biriyani, and brewed multiple cups of tea and coffee.
A couple of days later and more than two thousand miles away, Tina stepped out of her air-conditioned, rustic resort hut into the hot desert sun. Electricity wires ran along the road, hosting a bird now and then. A bee-eater, a green shimmer in the heat, would alight on a wire, and fly off before Tina could look at it to her heart’s content. After several, unvarying minutes, she noticed a yellow bird perched on the parapet of a house in the far distance. She made herself still and as small as possible – the birds knew they were being gawked at. With mounting anticipation, she put the binoculars up to her eyes and peered through them, adjusting the focus, until she saw a fluttering yellow plastic bag, stuck to a wad of chewing gum.
Good one
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