Lark song
An early
morning sun haloed the landscape in golden light as I drove between fields of
ploughed black soil, towards the dump near Patancheru cheruvu, where I hoped to
see a frisky Bluethroat prance after insects. Lark song suddenly poured in
through the open window, and I pulled over to the side of the track. An Indian
Skylark was fluttering somewhere between the sun and me. I could not see it,
but that did not matter, for it is one of those birds whose song surpasses its
physical appearance in attractiveness.
I simply stood against the car,
drenched in the glorious and profuse warbling emanating from his tiny,
quivering syrinx. He drifted hither and thither on vibrating wings, exploding
with the wound up energy of his voluble performance. I wouldn’t be surprised if
his pinions fluttered with the kinetic fervor and excitement that consumed the
little creature. I would like to believe that his ecstatic levitation and
buoyancy were the result of that full-throated flood of uncontrollable sound
rebounding from terra firma in aural waves and cushioning him in the ether.
Listening to him, all else fades
away. I squint into the sun, but the bird is unseen, just his radiant melody
floods down mesmerizing me with its repetitive strain, its slyly imitative
descants, and its clever improvisations. His stamina is monstrous. The
performance just goes on and on, never reducing in volume, never slowing down, and
never faltering. Minutes pass and the aerial songster’s luminous art abides.
What a magnificent moment; to stand still and listen to an invisible bird pouring
out his heart through sunlit skies! To spy his partner crouched beside an
upturned sod, awash in that rhapsodic serenade! To realize that the world’s
magic, its charm, its achingly simple joys, are so easily within our reach; one
simply has to connect with nature, or disconnect from artificiality.
When his time in the sun had run its course, his
song ended abruptly, as though switched off, and he parachuted on cupped,
outstretched wings, landing unobtrusively beside her. No one who didn’t know
better, would believe that this superficially nondescript ball of feather was a
virtuoso; that such a drab consumer of chitin and seed be so spectacularly
endowed.
That is, precisely, the endearing charm of nature.
She reveals her secrets at her own pace. Hurry she knows not, neither tolerates
she impatience. But silence, stealth, and solitude are handy at divining her mysteries.
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