Basushree Pandey
Deepak’s house was old-fashioned, though quite big. Though old, everyone envied its style. Everyone passing along that way would stop in front of it, and have a look. Most of them were heard exclaiming, “O, what a wonderful house!” Those who boasted of their big houses used to get numbed, once they saw the interior of Deepak’s house. The rooms were quite big.
A big clock hung on the outside wall of the biggest room. Pictures of national luminaries too had been placed. Among there were King Janak, Prithvinaran Shah, Tribhuvan Bir Bikram Shahdev, Araniko etc. Above those pictures, sparrows often built their nests and brooded a generation of chicks.
One day, a sparrow said to his wife, “Let’s stop making nest at the back of this picture. If, for any reasons, it falls, the nest will be destroyed and the eggs will fall and break, and if they have chicks in them, the chicks will die.”
The she-sparrow said, “How will the picture fall? No, nothing like that will happen. We can always make a nest here.”
“Listen! The month we brood our chicks is a very stormy one. If wild winds blow, the picture will fall for sure.”
But the she-sparrow did not listen to her husband. Instead, she started making the nest behind the picture. The picture had been hung with a thread on the hanger. The birds built their nest upon it.
One evening, Deepika entered her bedroom after dinner. Soon, a terrible storm rose, and things started striking one another.
The wind was so strong that it blew away some of the zinc sheets from the room. Terrified, Deepika did not look out. Moreover, since it was already dark, she crawled into the bed and slept.
Early next morning, Deepika came to the living room. O, what a sorry sight she saw! The picture, where the birds had their nest, had fallen down on the floor and with it had flown the nest. She could see eggs all broken on the floor. From a few of them, half-made chicks—all dead now—had come out. She did not see the parent sparrows anywhere.
Many days later, once again, the sparrows built a nest upon the big wall clock. The nest was bigger than usual. The sparrows considered the place safer than other places for making a home. They perhaps thought, they had no reason to fear there.
Unfortunately, it happened to be a clock that needing winding in every fifteen days. Poor birds! They did not know this.
When it was time to wind the clock, Deepika’s father went to take it down the wall. But, he was surprised to see tiny, dry tuft at its back. The sparrows had built a nest. Taking the clock off the wall would dismantle the nest. Not taking it out would mean, it would not work anymore. But Deepika’s father was a kind-hearted man. He wanted to save the nest at all cost, even by leaving the clock unused till the birds hatched their eggs and raised a generation of chicks.
After many days, he checked the nest. But lo, it was empty. The birds had raised their chicks, and they had flown away into the world. Only then, he threw away the abandoned nest, and wound the clock spring. It started working again.
***
[Bashushree Pandey is a senior author, who writes for children. She is also a social worker, who has invested many decades of life in social works, particularly for children in need. She has published more than half a dozen of books for children. He Stopped Bringing Balloons is a collection of her stories in English.]