“Are we having guests today?” My mother used to mumble whenever a crow cawed insistently outside our window. But that was yesteryear when one had the luxury to indulge in some superstition without the fear of sounding irrational. With the pandemic raging around us now, there is really no need to take the crow’s announcement seriously as no guest is going to come to stay in the foreseeable future.
Of late, we have a new theory floating around that crows are capable of conscious thought just like human beings and monkeys. Now I am wondering whether there is any pattern to the tonal inflection of its caws. Are they meant to be some sort of a coded message for us human beings? For instance, short casual caws may be “all is well” kind of assurance and long high-pitched ones may be warning signals. After all, crows have always coexisted with mankind since the dawn of civilisation and must be well aware of the vicissitudes of human life.
Inside our compound, there used to be a certain crow — black with streaks of brown on its back as though somebody, in a fit of annoyance, had tossed henna at it. This bird would land on my kitchen window sill with a loud squawk when I listened to devotional songs on my music player every morning. It would remain still for some time with its head tilted to one side like a discerning music buff. Based on a conventional theory that crows are our ex-ancestors, I suspected that it could be my late aunt in the form of this particular bird. Crazy it might seem, something about the crow’s appearance and behaviour reminded me of her since she always sported hennaed hair, besides immersing herself in prayers and chants as long as she lived.
Way back in the 1980s, when we were in Mysore, I often had the occasion to observe at close quarters two creatures — monkeys and crows bustling about energetically in our locality. Sometime during noon, a group of monkeys would troop into a nearby mango grove resulting in a lot of commotion as the house owners would light a few crackers to scare them away. The next stop for the ousted simians would be the terraces of the houses where the women would have spread grains or ‘ vadaams ’ (fryums) to dry in the sun. Before they could land there, the crows, perched on the surrounding trees, would alert the people with continuous cawing while flying agitatedly from one branch to another. Suitably warned, almost everyone would rush upstairs to save their stuff and carry them back indoors. They would remember to retrieve the black umbrellas too, kept alongside the winnows and plastic sheets to ward off the birds. The monkeys had a habit of meddling with the umbrellas and breaking them apart in frustration.
In the absence of the disturbing umbrellas, a large number of crows would descend on the terraces to feast on the spilled grains and leftover half-dried ‘ vadaams ’, while the monkeys would go in search of other areas. Looking back, I wonder whether the crows acted as self-appointed sentries with loud warning cries only to benefit later from a panic situation created by the monkeys.
Perhaps, all the fables about the anthropomorphic crow were written only after keenly observing their astute nature and smartness in survival tactics. Do we need further proof of its eligibility to join the conscious creatures’ club?
saraswathi100@yahoo.com
