When life falls apart

SUBHASHINI RAGHAVAN

Are you in a state when everything seems to be falling apart in your life? You do not like anybody in your class. The moment you and your brother meet, you fight most disgracefully. You look in the mirror and realise that your nose is too long. And you're getting acne of all sizes on your face. In short, unpleasant things are happening and you just cannot cope.

Well, meet someone who is literally, physically falling apart and still coping... and wonderfully - surviving against the toughest odds. Meet B. P. Crow, who lives in a lush Flame- of- the- Forest tree opposite my balcony. B. P. is not Blood Pressure, but Bits and Pieces. Here is a crow that seems to be made of bits and pieces and assembled all wrong. Some of these bits and pieces keep falling off, yet B. P. Crow survives and seems happy about it.

To begin with B. P. Crow lost all the toes and claws of one leg, when he perched on an electric transformer a year ago. Next he lost the stump of a leg - on which he used to lean - in a violent fight with a raven twice his size. Which is why he sits on his belly all the time. When he tries standing, he topples down and to retain his balance, he has to push his beak on the ground and lever himself up. His head doesn't have that neat, back -combed look all crows have - the few feathers he has, stick out in all directions as if someone had crudely glued them on him.

And then there was the day he got entangled in a ball of plastic wire. By the time a couple of urchins extracted him - which he resisted with all his might - he lost most of his tail. That was also when his voice changed. So, when he caws, it sounds like he is being strangled, startling other crows who stare at him in horror. And then came the escape from a vicious tomcat who stalked him one rainy day. As his lone leg could not lift his heavy body fast enough, his eye took the swipe from the cat's sharp claws. Not that B. P. Crow's spirit was dampened in any way. His lone eye now gleams with all the inquisitiveness typical of his species.

Now we come to his beak. Till last week, he had a beak, which should have been on a vulture. The upper half stuck out a good centimetre longer and was viciously curved at the tip. Of course such a beak is a great asset in fights - but eating is tough, for he had to cock his head sideways to get food into his mouth, and he couldn't hold on to harder food like rotis to break them up, for how could he balance himself if his only leg was used for that?

And then, last week, B. P. Crow vanished. I went down with a basket to see if he was lying down wounded somewhere. But there was no sign of him and I assumed that the inevitable had happened. After all, it is amazing, that in the highly competitive world of crows, with all his disabilities, with no one to protect him, he had somehow survived this long. He undoubtedly had courage, which many of us humans don't have.

And then this morning, he suddenly reappeared. And he no longer looked a crow. I had thought it was impossible for B. P. Crow to become more battered and moth eaten than he already was, but he had managed to become worse! That tough vulture beak had somehow broken half way up and now he had a longer lower beak and a half- upper beak. He came flapping in a lopsided way, at the milk soaked bread I hurriedly kept for him on the window ledge and fell headlong into the food. He angrily protested when I tried to help him out. But he now ate digging his lower beak into the food and tilting his head backwards to let it all go in. All the feathers on his back were gone. And one wing was clearly broken; it sat on him folded like a rag. But clearly the spirit wasn't broken. His lone eye shone like a star.

So inspired was I by B. P. Crow's surviving skills, that I went back to the mirror to replace my grumpy sad face with a determinedly smiling one. I then looked at

B. P. Crow again out of the window, and this time my smile became a laugh of admiration. Do you know why?

Because in that broken beak, B. P. Crow was now holding a twig tightly. He was building a nest.

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