A Brave Heart!

The sun shone mildly in her balcony lovingly caressing her feet and face as she sat at the open door with her laptop sitting on her long spread legs as she typed her thoughts out. The winters were very cold this year. Public holidays and weekends were the only days when one could soak in the warm daylight in Delhi. The sun had a healing effect on her both physically and emotionally. Delhi had given her a lot and also taken a lot from her. What it couldn’t take and no one ever could take from her was her writing. Writing was therapeutic to her. As her face now basked in its brilliance, the sun brought back memories of the past years making her feel lucky for what she had in life. 

Her balcony looked out into a beautiful square shaped garden with flowering plants on all sides and a well-kept bed of grass in the middle. Birds flew past the balcony every now and then chirping about in a very Delhi style chatter. She would often laugh at the various sounds that a simple cuckoo sitting on her veranda made as if it were talking to you. ‘Almost has a Punjabi accent’, she thought amusingly.  And as if that was not enough chatter, the pigeons had their own thing to say – grunting every now and again – perhaps dismissing what the cuckoo had said. They seemed to be talking all the time; mostly unnoticed. That is what life in a big city does to you. One fails to notice the presence of nature around yourself. May be that’s why even the birds knew they had to be louder to be heard! How they evolve!

But cuckoos and pigeons were not the only ones making their presence felt. Most evenings you would hear a peacock call out from behind the building. One weekend when she was gazing out of her balcony as she spoke on the phone she saw a peacock fly from one terrace to another. It looked huge with those large wings unfurled to take flight. While the birds sing their hearts out around her abode the cats have built a civilization within the confines of the society. There were initially about 2 or 3 cats that would visit the society and then they decided to proliferate here. There are now about 15 cats in the premises of all varied colors; black, grey, the usual golden, golden with spots, white, and many other combinations.  She has heard them fight as they snarl at each other, deliver kittens screaming in pain, and seen them preying on pigeons and lizards. Quite a fierce lot! They are almost like monkeys – they can climb four floors of the buildings using the pipes and manage to enter the house through the balcony. She had once returned from office to find a cat ensconced on the sofa in the living room and had later walked in the kitchen to find broken mugs and open kitchen compartments. 

She didn’t mind any of this. She had grown up surrounded by nature. Her childhood home was on the ground floor with a balcony that opened into a garden. She had grown up with birds, squirrels, cats, dogs and even snakes and mongoose during the monsoons. Heavy rainfall was characteristic of the region and monsoons would fill the garden with water turning it lush green the very next day. Long weeds of grass would grow soon after – so much that the gardener had to be paid extra to clean it out. There was a banana tree in one corner that had grown its roots deep into the soil. It bore fruit one year and then her Dad said it had to be removed because it only bears fruit once in its life but its roots may grow long and spread wide into the foundation of the building making it weaker. So one day a group of people from the municipal corporation were called to cut it down. She had at times even jumped over that fence next to the banana tree to cross over into the open field owned by the Police department.

One of her friends had said, ‘My family knows the regional head of police here. We will find their house in the woods if we crossed this grass field behind our society. They have trees of Chinese apple (Ber) in their backyard. Aunty is very sweet. If we request her she will let us take some home.’ When they found the bungalow they couldn’t help but smile. It was almost like the adventure of the famous five or secret seven which they read in novels. They had sprinted towards the bungalow in excitement until her friends stopped in track saying, ‘Ohh but wait. Is it nice to go ask for fruits like this? I don’t know if she will recognize me. I’ve only met her once’, she said panting! But they had come a long way to just turn back without trying their luck. So they walked in and stood at the gate hoping someone would notice. And indeed they did. 

Quickly a servant ran out of the house to ask what five kids were doing in front of their gate. Noone was usually allowed without permission. He had an expression that clearly asked ‘How did you manage to get here kids?’ Pleased with the bravery they had displayed and the tone of surprise in his voice they valiantly told their tale of crossing the grassfield and the woods to get there. The servant smiled and said, ‘Alright then. Follow me.’ Aunty greeted them inside the house with most pleasure. She was just as amused by the tale but at the same time warned them not to repeat such a thing. They returned from the place with a bag full of Ber each to take home. When she had shown the Ber to her mother and told her how she got them, her mother was suspicious of whether she should even let her eat those fruits. But she told her mother that she had eaten plenty on her way back and was fine! She basked in her bravery for several days after that narrating it to her father and her sister as well. 

One evening soon after that day she saw some police vans patrolling the area behind the fence. It was late in the night. She was watching from the window in her living room. The vans had police as well as some workers who were measuring the fence area. They left after a while and She did not think much of it. She was anyway too young to know what was going on. A few days later they started building a concrete wall along the fence and the whole area was secured so that no one could ever cross the fence over again! Perhaps the aunty had informed her husband about the possibility of someone breaching their security from there. And thus the story of her bravery was locked out behind that concrete wall that they never crossed again!

As she sat reminiscing this story and typing it out her feet tinkled in the warmth of the sun again reminding her the tales of her bravery at every step of her life. Just like this first one, the tales remained similar, but her bravery grew manifold. Whether it be learning to drive on her own and driving all night in a road trip to reach home in time, choosing a different career path after graduation, raising her voice against harassment and oppression, learning to fight when it was breaking you the most, learning to lean in at workplaces that were male dominated and sitting at the table required a bravery to toss sexist comments into the bin, when she not only fought for herself but also extended support to other women who needed it and when she stood up for herself against her own emotions when she was taken for granted by her partner. Bravery that was never told, bravery that she always showed. She was certainly a brave heart!