Not a vegan bird

Jan 13, 2008

When I came back to Delhi after one week, six flights and two countries, there was a pigeon sitting in my kitchen. There were twigs carpeting the floor, and dirty bird footprints all over the counter, the sink, and the window ledge. It had knocked all the dishes off the shelf. It looked fat and baleful;, and with four hours before my next trip, I let it be.

The last time I chased out a bird was such a traumatic experience for both of us that I didn’t have the stomach for it. The pigeon had flapped and pooed around the phonebooth sized kitchen; I screamed and waved a broom. I closed the door for a minute, then went in again with the broom swinging and the light flashing. After a few rounds of this the bird became too scared to move. No wild animal should let itself be poked by a broom handle. I felt like I had broken a rule I was going to have to pay for by coming in that close.

After one more week, two more flights and assorted boats, buses, and auto rickshaws, the bird wasn’t there. More dishes in the sink, and more twigs on the floor, but no irate pigeon. So I stashed my traveling clothes downwind, and went to sleep alone for the first time in forever. On Tuesday my work colleagues told me the bird was most likely trying to make a nest. Of course! Why else all the twigs and affronted looks?

By the time I got back from our workshop there were two eggs and no bird. One egg, broken by the sink, trailing yellow yoke and shells across the shattered teacups. The other, white and oblong, tucked on the shelf against the wall. Cleaning up the broken egg was bad. The liquid parts wouldn’t come up onto the scrub. I pushed it around, and it picked up black streaks without losing its sloppy coherence. The dried parts were caked onto the dishes, the colour of a desert when the monsoons fail.

The unbroken egg was briefer, but worse. It was too heavy, and not cold. I held it on my palm, in between breaths. I feared it would start to hatch then and there, and I’d have to face the mucky plaintive baby whose home I had dismantled. As I bent to listen I think it was silent, but a white noise filled my head, so I’m not sure. I dropped it into the garbage bag on top of the twigs, a broken blue tea cup and a tumbleweed of my hair. It felt like the least vegan thing I’ve done in a long time.

When I’d scrubbed the bird droppings as much as I could and burned them off the butane cooker, I closed the kitchen to the fumes. Even though it was dark and cold by then and I was tired I filled up the shower/laundry/scrubbing bucket. I washed the floors, on my hands and knees on the linoleum, listening to Vinyl Café story podcasts. I scrubbed backwards until I reached the bathroom drain, then brought out my lavender oil.

Before leaving New York, a friend had given me the vial. She had explained that a friend of hers, who had worked in many parts of Asia and Africa, had brought it with her to every hostel and apartment and scrounged up bed. The oil brought home with it, made each place the same in a clean and proper way. When my apartment was robbed in October 2005, we felt the same urge to banish the invaders by cooking things with lots of garlic and listening to music very loudly, as we sat in the cold breeze of the open window, waiting for the police to come and take the fingerprints off the glass.

With the kitchen clean and the floors shiny, I sat in the wicker chair by the window, poured myself a bit of scotch into an unharmed teacup, and took out some of the store of fair trade dark chocolate I’m hoarding in the fridge. Lavender oil on my light bulbs felt like done, like nothing left to see here folks. It felt like washing up in the ringing-ear silence after a party well thrown. In the darkness beside the chair I knew there was a plant I turn once in a while, just to see it find the sun again.