The Statesman, 31 August 2006
It is the sweetest alarm clock ever. The cuckoo in the tree next to my window may not be as minutely accurate as the cocksure cock when it comes to timing the break of dawn, but its soft cooing is any day preferable to the latter’s “rude awakening”. In fact, that sweetness facilitates my smooth transition from a dream world to the unfolding of a new day. The cuckoo gives a vigorous shake to its throat and launches into a wave of undulating notes. Though I have not been able to spot the little, reclusive fellow among the thick leaves, I am never far from its musical overtures.
It starts by prodding the air with a single “cooo”. Pausing for effect, it then stretches it into a “coooo”. An encouraging response from a tree nearby and my cuckoo goes into a paroxysm of guttural activity ~ coooo, cooooo, coooooo… followed by sudden, breathtaking silence. Only for the next round of cooing and echoing to begin all over again. Closing my eyes, I open my ears. There could not have been a fresher start to the morning even if a thousand flowers were to bloom before me.
I cannot pinpoint when exactly the cuckoo made the tree near my window its home. I became conscious of it one fine day when my sleepy brain was penetrated by the soothing melody of its wake-up call, “Cooo…” Ah! How could I ever feel irritated with that mellow voice for disturbing me so early in the morning? I looked up at the tree, waiting for the bird’s next call to come floating down to me. I came, over and over again, till its tone was entrenched permanently in my psyche.
I would wake up to the perfect background score for performing my early morning ablution in peace. In fact, I almost waltzed through my brushing, bathing and dressing, ready to face another day with a spirit of optimism. What wonders a little cooing could do!
I called it the resident cuckoo because unlike other cuckoos that were here today and gone tomorrow, this particular bird stayed on and played on, becoming an inhabitant of the tree by right of stay.
Perhaps it had found a permanent mate in the vicinity. I don’t know. All I wanted was to go on listening to its cooing day in and day out. The cuckoo belted out its song with such great love that I could never get tired of it. Do we ever tire of our mother’s loving cooking? It set me wondering, how is it that the same cuckoo, with so much love in its heart, could be so deceitful as to “use” the crow’s nest to hatch its eggs. So much like lovely women who attract men, “use” them and then ditch them.
My resident cuckoo is growing in confidence every day. When it was small, it could hardly coo for a few minutes at a stretch. Now it coos throughout the day, and at times at unearthly hours in the night too. It has fallen in love with its own voice! But an excess of anything is disastrous. With no rest and no time to repair itself, the cuckoo’s throat is often giving way of late, so much so that when its voice starts ascending the scales, it cracks in the middle of a note and forces me to block it out of my ears!
But the cuckoo never notices its folly and carries on higher and higher, till its cooing falls from the heights of melody to the depths of screeching. What a torture it is to grin and bear it then! I feel like taking up a stone and throwing it at the bird to get rid of that ghastly sound forever. If only I could spot the elusive fellow in the tree next to my window and teach it a lesson for overstepping its welcome. But then, so thoroughly conditioned have I become by now to its presence that I cannot imagine managing my day without the cuckoo’s music for company. What goes up must come down. So here’s hoping that the cuckoo’s high-pitched tone soon regains its soothing contours and fills the air once again with its song.