In this city of people and traffic, at this building where the government has set up government stuff, sparrows are bathing.
The monsoon rains come in big, bright washes, cleaning up streets, sidewalks, trees. The water collects in pools wherever there’s a dip.
Any dip.
Any size.
Some of the roads have water filled craters and cars avoid them, buses plough through.
Five, or a few more sparrows are very excited about their crater bath. This dip, somewhere at the front of this building, under a large old tree, is a rough sort of oval that could fit a laptop backpack. Deep enough for a community bath if you’re a sparrow.
The one who stands out is the show-off.
(This sparrow is from brilliant bird photographer Girish Thakur’s collection of awesome bird images. You can see some of them at his Instagram account here.)
Definitely the frontliner. First in, first to flap, first out, first to fluff, first to hop back in again. Calls loudly. Then this sparrow jump-flies in, flapping, into the middle, a comic bird at bird theatre. Now I know they’re real. Not just the happy imagination of a graphic artist.
The other sparrows are less gutsy about jumping in, but they’re all expert bathers. Each one knows exactly what they want. There’s the one at the edge, a quick hop in and a quick hop out. Then back in again, out again. Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat.
The careful, self-loving, wing-cleaner emerges from the bath and takes her time. This wing is God’s own wing. It’s expensive stuff, very valuable, needs much looking after.
Stretch.
Inspect.
Poke at with beak.
Flutter.
Dislodge invisible particle.
Reflutter.
Look around quickly to see who’s watching.
Return wing back to body.
Call out a caution, incoming, and hop into the crater. Flutter.
There’s a sparrow on one of the lower branches of the tree. Watching for a chance, a little room, and space at the bath. Makes a straight line of flight to a spot at the edge, wing flutter, beak dip, wing flutter. Short flight away and hop about.
Front liner sparrow has had enough for now. Short flight to the tree branch sparrow, who is engaged in a random circle dance to the rhythm of the bathless. They stop next to each other and bathed frontliner shoots up to the same branch on this tree. This is the lookout branch. The diving branch. Now the unbathed random dancer hops back to and into the water.
This water is clear at the centre. You can see the reflection of tree branches, leaves. The sides are muddy and grassy. There are little stones and urban junk in it. Broken clay pot. A ceramic mug handle. Things I cannot see.
God’s own wing sparrow is out again, now cleaning her chest. The other wing is at quarter stretch. Quarter expands to full and the investigation and combing begins. There is a definite within-ness to this, an absorption, so that the wing, each cell of that wing, every unit of bird being, knows that it is in performance of deep ritual.
A sparrow’s wing. A crater. Community bath.
Monsoon.
(From my Leaf and Lighthouse series of posts.)
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