A flight of pigeons (Short story)

A flight of pigeons

“I hate these bloody pigeons.” I screamed. “What is wrong with you? Leave those poor birds alone.” My wife answered. “Leave them alone? I would love to leave them alone! But they don’t leave us alone. They are all over the place, flapping away and making that monotonous noise – gutar goo, gutar goo…tchah. They don’t have brains worth a damn, and are always humping away…” “Shh! Mind your tongue! The children…” Laxmi (my wife) hissed at me. “Sorry…but these birds are a pain. Constantly building nests, hump…er…laying eggs, stink of pigeon everywhere. And they are so stupid – they are suicidal. Banging into glass panes, getting electrocuted in wires, getting cut up by kite strings…and just smell that stink! Some stupid pigeon must have died somewhere, and is rotting! Ugh!” “Yes (sniff) it does smell a bit bad, no?” she put her nose up, and sniffed like a dog. “But its not there all the time…comes and goes. Wonder where it is coming from? Definitely something dead and decomposing. Anyway, tea is ready.” She said, passing me a cup. The tea was good, and it calmed my mind, as I went over the want ads in the papers. I had been downsized a few months back, and was still looking for a new job. I had managed to lay my hands on some money, so the situation was not desperate, but I needed a job. While I was studying the ads and circling the ones which I found interesting, Laxmi came and tapped me on my shoulder. She looked suddenly worried and thoughtful. “Aaho, that smell…it’s of rotting flesh, isn’t it?”                   “Yes, how disgusting. Must be those mussalmans downstairs – probably not cleared out their dustbin.”                   “Don’t be silly dear. Why should anyone keep rotting meat in their house? I was just thinking…”                   “What?”                   “Er…never mind.” And she suddenly walked away. I stared after her, puzzled. After a minute I got back to my paper. But before I could get engrossed in it, there was another whiff of that disgusting smell. That’s it. I put down my paper, and went and put on my shirt. “Where are you going?” Laxmi asked. “Enough is enough! I am going down to give that mussalman, Syed Ali, a piece of my mind. Let him eat meat if he wishes, but the least he can do is to clean up his home and prevent it from stinking. Bloody rascal.”                   “Aaho, what are you doing?” Laxmi caught hold of my hand. “Ever since you lost your job, you have been so violently angry. How can you go and accuse them? Every body in the building eats non veg – why blame Syed Ali alone?” She was pleading with me. “Oh all right.” I extricated my hand from her grasp. “I will not attack them, don’t worry. I will just go up and down and see from where the smell is coming. Let me go, Laxmi, don’t worry.” I left the house and started quietly down the stairs. We stay on the top floor, and so I generally take the lift down. Thus, people were quite surprised to see me on the stairs. As luck would have it, the first person I met was Syed Ali himself; fat and cleanshaven – dressed in Sunday uniform of vest and lungi. “Arre, Kulkarni sahib. How nice to see you. We are meeting after so many days…” “Salaam aley kum, Syedbhai.” I replied. “Wale kum as salaams…come in, come in.” He caught me by my arm, and steered me into his house. Everyone seems to think of my arm as public property. But before I could react, I was in his house. “Kulkarni sahib, I wanted to talk to you. You are the chairman of the society and a strict vegetarian, so I thought you are the best person to talk to.” “About what?” I was foxed. “Arre sahib…actually there seems to be some unhygienic person in our building. Every now and then, there is a whiff of rotting flesh. I felt a bit hesitant to talk to people…who knows how people can react. But you obviously could not be a source of this, as you are a vegetarian. Also, as you are the Chairman, you have the right to ask people to clean up.” I looked at him in surprise, then blessed Laxmi for preventing me from going and blasting this guy – he would have been so hurt. “You are right, Syedbhai. Even I have been getting a whiff of this smell. I tell you what, let’s go up and down the stairs and see from where the smell is coming. Then we will discreetly tell them to clean up their act.” Syedbhai agreed, and we went down the stairs, sniffing away. It must have looked very funny to any observers – two portly, middle aged men going around sniffing away like prize bloodhounds on a scent. But try as we might, we couldn’t get a whiff from any house. Disappointed and puzzled, we back home. “Well?” Laxmi raised an eyebrow at me as I returned. “Nyet! I and Syedbhai went all over, but we didn’t get a sniff. Maybe it is after all a dead dog or something…shit” but even as I spoke, a whiff of rotting flesh passed by, revolting both of us. But even as I sniffed, it was gone again. “Aaho…did you…did you check at Bagrecha’s house?” I started. “Ba…Bagrecha? Er…no. Why did you think about him?” “Nothing…it may be silly of me, but there was an article in the paper the other day. A senior citizen was found dead in his house. Apparently he had been dead for months, but no one ever knew. His body rotted and stank, but the neighbors thought it was a smell from the fishermen village nearby. After all, who would think that a neighbor had died and is rotting in his home? So I thought….” “Nonsense!” “Why nonsense?” Laxmi was like all women, drawing strength from opposition. “Why is it nonsense? It is possible. Old man Bagrecha is a widower and lives alone. He mixes with no one, and is practically a hermit. Sometimes, he doesn’t come out of his house for days on end. He has children who live god knows where, and anyway he has had no one visiting him for years, the watchman told me.” “Laxmi…” “I don’t want to hear anything. Let us go right now and see if he is alright.” Laxmi switched off the gas, wound her sari pallu firmly and looked me in the eye. When she gets into this mood, she is absolutely unreasonable. I capitulated with bad grace. “Oh all right. Let’s go and see if he is at home.” We put on our chappals and went down three floors to Bagrecha’s house. As we walked, with every step, Laxmi became more uncomfortable. After all, we hardly knew the fellow…nobody did. He was an unpleasant old man whom no one liked to mix with. But still, under the circumstances… We reached his door, and looked at each other. She nodded at me, and I rang the bell. No response. After some time, I rang it again; longer. Still no response. Finally, I leant on the bell for nearly a couple of minutes, and the sound was loud enough to irritate the fellow in the neighboring house. He opened the door and peered out. “Arre, Kulkarni saaheb!” he was surprised to see me. “What are you doing?” I was a bit embarrassed. It was difficult to explain to him that we were suspecting his neighbor of having died and disturbing the society with the smell of his rotting flesh. I tried to tread the middle path. “Well…er …actually, we were just seeing whether Mr. Bagrecha is at home…just wanted to see that he is …ok.” “Oh? I think he is not at home. Not seen him for days…even the paper boy has stopped leaving the newspaper at his house since some time now. Maybe he has gone out. He does that sometimes, just vanishes for days.” “I see, I see. Then…I think we will take your leave then.” I and Laxmi beat a quick retreat. Several days passed, and no job in sight. It is not easy for a middle aged clerk to get a new job these days, especially when he was been downsized. If not for that unexpected cash inflow, it would have been difficult indeed. Laxmi was calm and composed about it; she had perfect faith in me as a good provider. What she was not calm about, was that damned smell. The smell continued to haunt us every now and then, and she still had that bee in her bonnet about a dead neighbor. She wouldn’t raise the topic with me, but discussed with her friends in her kitty party group. Soon they decided to do some detective work on their own. These middle aged ‘kaku’s can be a formidable information gathering tool, I must say. If I were a criminal, I would rather have the CID and RAW on my trail, rather than these women. They got info on all the families in our society, all the empty flats, and all the flats where elderly people were living alone. As ours was quite a large building, this was not that simple a task. But soon, they had identified 3 empty flats and one elusive senior citizen. Soon, she came and proudly came and presented her list to me. The empty flats belonged to a couple of NRIs, and one to a local person. The elusive senior citizen was again, Bagrecha. “What do I do with this?” “Check the flats, of course. You are the chairman of the society aren’t you?” “Yes I am…but darling, be reasonable…this notion you have is turning into an obsession.” Laxmi grasped me by the hand and sat next to me. Her eyes were very serious. “Narayan...” It was always something serious when she called me by name. Usually she used the honorific ‘aaho’ when addressing me. “Narayan, I can’t explain it, but there is something going on. I feel it. I feel…death. Death is near. I can’t tell where, but you must humour me in this, or I will do something drastic – I will call the police, and then it will be a big hullabaloo, and either way we will get disgraced…” “Here, here – relax. Calm down.” Laxmi really scares me sometimes. “OK, if you feel so seriously about it, we will open the empty flats. I have the keys. Non resident flat owners have to keep a set of keys with us, incase there is any emergency repairs or something to be done.” I had to call a meeting of the executive committee first, and explain the situation to them. They agreed, and we went and formally opened the empty flats, one by one. As expected, they were empty and entirely innocent of corpses, or any other sinister items. Laxmi grasped my arm tightly, and looked so serious, that I decided not to release the various jokes I was going to crack at her expense. And the smell continued, haunting us like a will’o the wisp. One day I came home from an interview, whistling happily as I climbed the stairs. The interview had gone well, and the manager had hinted that I was in the final running for the job. It was excellent news, as my finds were running low, and even that unexpected money I had received was getting over. Oh, what a feeling, I am dancing on the …. I stopped. There was a big crowd at Bagrecha’s door. I felt a cold shiver going across me. “Here, what’s going on here?” I asked, and several people in the crowd turned around. There were a couple of watchmen and some members of the building management committee. “Arre, Kulkarni saaheb is here. Good.” It was Chiplunkar, the secretary. He is the guy who really does the work of the society; I am just the chairman – a decorative post. “Arre saaheb, I was going over the minutes of that meeting we had last time, where we decided to check the flats for the origin of the smell. I realized that while we checked the unoccupied flats, we did not check Mr. Bagrecha’s flat.” “But…” “Now then, we said that we will check all unoccupied flats. If Mr. Bagrecha is not here, then the flat is unoccupied. Therefore we are going to check it.” “But…you can’t generally barge into someone’s house…it is infringement of privacy. Anyway, we don’t have his keys…and we can’t just break down the door, can we?” I tried to grin. Chiplunkar just shrugged his shoulders. “What privacy and all…Kulkarni saaheb, we are not in the US. Anyway, we are not breaking down his door; I have called Maganlal, the lock maker to pick the lock. Arre, Maganlalbhai, how much longer will it take?” “Bas, its done sir.” The locksmith was sweating with concentration, suddenly he smiled and relaxed, and threw the door open. Immediately a strong smell of decomposing flesh filled the air. I wilted against the wall. “Hey Ram!” shouted the startled secretary and rushed in. The smell had me rooted to the spot. “What a mess! Kulkarni saaheb! Come and look at this!” I walked in, trying to compose myself. A grisly sight met my eyes, though not the one I had expected. “Pigeons!” Laxmi exclaimed. “What a sight it was. A whole colony of pigeons had made their nest in the windows, and had hatched eggs, so there were a lot of young birds also there. And a cat or something must have attacked them; there were dead pigeons all over the place. In the nests, the young pigeons had starved to death, I suppose. Then the rains must have come, and rotted the dead bodies. What a sight it was…dead pigeons and blood all over the place, ants and lizards eating the corpses, and the stink….” “Tchee tchee. Stop already.” Laxmi shuddered. “How terrible.” She walked away into the kitchen. Just before entering, she turned around and looked at me. “So I was right wasn’t I? I told you I sensed death in the building.” I smiled at her. “How right you are, Laxmi.” Some days later I was feeding the pigeons, when I heard my wife remark to her friend. “How Kulkarni saaheb has changed, no? Earlier, he used to simply hate the pigeons. He used to curse them at every opportunity he got, and throw things at them. But now, he has started liking them. Feeds them everyday with his own hands, and has established two bird baths and bird houses on the terrace.” “So sweet.” I could feel the warm glow of the loving gaze being given to me by Laxmi’s friend. I smiled, and continued feeding the pigeons. Downstairs, I could still hear the sound of Bagrecha’s son arguing with Chiplunkar. He had come down from Surat because he had wanted to borrow some money from his father. He was not pleased to find his father missing and even more displeased to find that we had broken into his father’s flat in his absence. “Arre, so what if you are the secretary, eh? How can you break into a private house, tell me that?” “Mind your tone, Mr. Bagrecha.” “Arre, what mind your tone? Where is the money which my father kept in the house? He used to have minimum Rs Two lakhs in cash in the house, and now there is nothing. Where is that, eh?” “Listen friend, we opened the flat in the presence of five committee members, got the flat cleaned in our presence and immediately sealed it again in our presence. I have no idea whether there was money or not in the flat, but I assure you that nothing was disturbed when we opened the flat. And furthermore, instead of shouting at me, you can thank me for having cleaned the house. Who will bear that expense, eh? And what about the pending society payments for the past four months, who will pay that…” The argument continued downstairs, and I smiled and tossed some more grain to the pigeons, as they flapped around. Thank god for the pigeons. If they had investigated further for the source of the smell and found that old mans body in the cupboard…anyway, old men who live alone shouldn’t keep that much money in the house…the world is not safe nowadays… -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This story appears as part of my Short story collection - Bombay Mixture - on Amazon.com