#27 The curse of the parrots

I was confused when dad took me to the pet store. He always said he was gonna send me to a hostel, but a pet store? Before I could think further, dad said “we’re going to get parrots!”

I was even more confused. I never asked for parrots. And honestly, after dropping that huge ice block on the fishes to ‘cool’ them that summer, I thought I’ll be barred from going near any pet. But, don’t know who told him, we came home with two parrots. The nice green ones.

My mom named them “Mitu” and “Meenu” and my dad ordered his office workers to build a huge cage from packing crates and some mesh wire. By the end of that day, the parrots sat inside a huge cage having existential questions.

Since that moment, we never had peace even for a single day. The parrots fought with each other all the time. I think I chose the wrong pair when the shopkeeper asked me to choose the parrots. Maybe I separated them from their actual partners. Because they really hated each other. Even when we opened the cage (which we did a couple of times a week), the parrots would fly in opposite directions and would sit far away from each other.

So, when my dad decided to move back to Chennai, we thought we’ll leave the parrots somewhere on the way. On a summer morning in 1999, we stopped by an Amman temple along the highway near Tindivanam. It had a nice vibe, a huge banyan tree, and few parrots too! My dad and I got down from the Eicher truck and opened the cage. Mitu and Meenu flew toward the tree and sat at opposite branches. They didn’t scream anymore. For the first time, they sounded like parrots. We felt we did something right by giving the parrots freedom - from us and from each other.

Even after several years, whenever people asked me “Why are you still single?” I wanted to tell them “I sabotaged the lives of two parrots when I was a kid and they cursed me to be single for a long time before they flew into that Banyan tree”. But I didn’t because no one would’ve believed my story.