My delightful treks to the terrace

They are choosy.They prefer potato chips. They cannot bear the sight of vegetables. They adore  chappathis but sulkingly accept rice when there is no choice. Fortunately, they still prefer water to quench their thirst and do not demand Pepsi or Coke. But they have transformed my mornings into delightful adventures. I cherish the moment when they sweep in from nowhere to take a sip at the fresh water I fill in the basin at my terrace every morning. I am referring to the aerial guests who visit my terrace every morning to partake of the little rice and water I serve them on the parapet walls.

There was a program on Pothigai channel which spoke about the thousands and thousands of parrots visiting a house at Triplicane. It was an extraordinary sight to see the green parrots flocking the terrace to eat the rice served there for them. I could not but admire the meticulous care the photographer at Triplicane took to cook huge quantities of rice daily to feed the parrots. The picture of the parrots feeding on the rice kept swirling in my mind and I wanted also to feed the birds in a small way. The photographer said that it was the Tsunami which brought about this turn of events. For me it was the unprecedented rains in December last.

For every new announcement about the impending rain I used to climb the stairs to my terrace and personally verify the state of affairs on the sky. Every weather bulletin on the TV was followed by my own special bulletin based on my study of the sky and the hovering clouds. I can still remember the day the sky turned totally blue and the terrace flooded with bright sunlight. I could not contain my happiness to see that at last it had decided to stop raining. I was basking in the newfound sunlight and suddenly discovered what a wonderful place our terrace was! I wanted to celebrate this joy of having a spacious terrace  which I had hitherto used only to dry all the clothes that had got drenched by the flood waters which by habit entered my house every other day during this rainy season.

And I started celebrating  my terrace by serving food to the birds. The first few days were not so eventful. I used to go first, serve the food and quietly return to the ground floor to continue with my cooking. It was my husband who after a few minutes went  noiselessly to the terrace and peeped out of the window to see if any bird had come to eat the rice. He used to return with glee on his face and inform me that not a morsel of food was left behind!!I was happy to hear it ,but became irrevocably sad because I missed the opportunity to see the birds actually  feed. I did not have time to wait for the birds at the terrace because I had other morning duties clamouring for attention. As it is, since I retired from service I seemed to have invented the knack of stretching my work till time on end invariably leading my hungry husband to fret and fume for his morning bread which became available not until mid day.

I exchanged notes with others in a vain pursuit of identifying the causes /reasons for the strange way in which my morning duties expanded beyond the available time on a daily basis. When I was in service the cooking used to be over by 7.55 am giving me enough time to refresh myself and get ready to jump into the standing auto to speed to the college. (Cooking got over at 7.55 am? Not always, I hear my husband mumble.)Sometimes I let the sambaar boil for a few more minutes and so requested my husband to switch off the gas stove after five minutes. Exactly after five minutes, I used to remind him as I got into the auto to leave for MOP. If it were not the sambhaar it was the vegetable in the kadai that required to  spend some more time on the stove to become edible!

My husband had a strange feeling that he did half the cooking daily to help me reach college on time. By cooking, he just meant turning off the stove after five minutes. Very rarely he remembered to do that small task I had entrusted to him and every day as soon as I reached the college after 15 minutes I had to remind him about the 5-minute deadline. Initially he was such a simple sincere person that he used to declare apologetically how he had forgotten about the five-minute deadline and would rush to turn off the stove. Of course, he bore the brunt of his forgetfulness. Many a day it was a tryst with a ladle full of semisolid called sambar.   But over a period of time he learnt to become smart and left no tell-tale signs of his morning kitchen adventures. There was no left over at all in the evening. I could not pursue my investigative sessions about food spoilt because of negligence. Though I found it hard to believe that my cooking was so impeccable that it got over in the morning itself, I dared not ask my husband any probing questions because I preferred to believe that I was such a great cook!

Because I had no necessity to punch in at 8-30 am I seemed to have developed what may be called as the  aaraam se attitude to  household chores .Or was it the perfectionist in me who finds new chores daily to make my home a cleaner place to live in? I have no domestic help and the only person I have hired is a woman to sweep the garden clean. When there was no necessity for it at all, suddenly I found myself encroaching into her territory also. I organized a thulasi maadam near the well and categorically told her that I shall sweep the entire space around the thulasi maadam  in the morning before I decorate the front yard with kolams. She magnanimously agreed to this idea. Instead ,please sweep the new staircase alone, I had pleaded with her which request she chose to ignore very often. That is how I manage to end up with my hands full always.

Coming back to my treks to the terrace , I decided that no one had the right to rob me of the pleasure of watching the birds feed on the mini riceballs I serve daily. So I kept shifting the time from 6-30 am to 8-30 am to exactly identify when there was more traffic of birds so that I can see them have food. And it happened soon. They preferred it at 6-45 am. ( While conducting this experiment, unintentionally I had got delayed the morning meal time by a few more minutes roughly around sixty-five minutes. But because my husband had agreed that it was mandatory to do such mini experiments to find out great truths about the eating habits of winged visitors, he did not seem to mind this slight variation in his meal time!)

Crows. koels, pigeons. squirrels, mynahs, seven sisters  all of them arrived in a phased manner and partook of the food. It was such a pleasure to watch how each bird gave space and time to others and how peacefully all of them had their daily share without any turmoil!And the squirrels were the most exciting to watch. They always pretended that they came to the terrace just like that and not exactly to have food! The minute they came anywhere near the riceball they just picked it up and jumped to the nearest coconut palm and had their meal aaram se without any disturbance!

As soon as summer arrived I started keeping a basin full of cold water. Meanwhile , the perfectionist in me woke up again and admonished me for letting the terrace be strewn with leaves and baby coconuts and flowers when I was serving food for my aerial guests. So before refilling the water basin and serving food daily I started sweeping the terrace clean. It was strange to see the crows hurriedly assembling on the parapet wall the minute I opened the door leading to the terrace. They were impatient for the water. They were particular that I emptied the basin of left over water, cleaned it and then filled it with fresh water. By no means would they touch the used water!!They were impatient for the water but preferred to wait till I finished the cleaning operation! This latest cleaning operation of mine has successfully delayed our brunch time by another 45 minutes! I am just now wondering  why I should not segregate the brunch into the legitimate breakfast and proper lunch by cooking two different meals! Is that the right strategy to provide my good husband with his morning meals in the morning itself?