“Reeni,” my mother calls. “Where are you?”
I mumble something loud enough for her to hear, but just barely. I snatch my last few precious minutes before I have to reply, have to go down, have to, have to, have to. So many have-tos in the world.
But here on the rooftop, I am in a different world. A taller world, away from all the havetos. A quieter world. Even the traffic noises on the road below are far enough from me that I can ignore them.
I adjust my binoculars. I squint through blurry layers of green. Where is that little bird? I saw it fly here to perch a minute ago. And now it’s gone – escaped from me.
Dark feathers. Too small for a mynah. Smaller than a sparrow. Short, stubby tail. Come on, come on, I beg it silently. Who are you? Show me those feathers. Are you a sunbird? Will sunlight make your black feathers shine blue? Show me a little shine! I’m betting it is a sunbird. Where are you, bright feathers? Trying so hard to spot a quick shimmer makes me feel – well, a tiny bit shimmery myself.
Iridescent. That’s what. Are you iridescent, birdie?
My friend Yasmin, who is a champion in the words department, told me iridescence is a thousand-rupee word for shiny. A kind of shape-shifting shiny, blue to red to green. The kind that needs just the right light, and you have to be lucky enough to catch it from the right angle. Will I be that lucky person today?
“Reeeeeeni!” My mother is calling louder now. She is using the kind of grown-up voice that means business, so I have no choice.
I have to reply. “Comiiiing, Mummyyyy!”
I give up on the bird and quickly wave goodbye to my quiet terrace bird-watching spot. Bye, rain tree as tall as the building. Bye, leaves like feathers that fold shut every evening and open up again only at sunrise.
Bye to the monkeys sitting on the next rooftop, giving me looks like they’re trying to see if my binocs are edible.
Bye to the lizard napping on the wall. I, Reeni Thomas of 3B Horizon Apartment Flats, see all of you from my special rooftop place.
I take the stairs two at a time, down and down again to where Mummy is waiting. “Always on the roof,” she says. “Never listening to me. Sometimes, when I call you, it’s like talking to the wind.”
I smile my best smile. She brushes a leaf out of my hair.
“Come on, come on,” she says. “Time to do your homework. Don’t forget, you have school tomorrow. That means you have to be up early.”
As if I don’t know that. Early is fine with me – early is the best time to see birds and squirrels and lizards. But my mind is still on the sunbird that got away.
“Iridescent,” I say. “Isn’t it a wonderful word?”
Mummy shakes her head as if she cannot understand how such a tidy, organised person like her could possibly have a daughter like me, wild about all things with feathers and talons and beaks.
On the bus to school, I tell Yasmin how I almost, allllllmost, spotted a sunbird. She looks up from her book – she is always reading – to listen.
I tell her how a sunbird’s feathers shine in the sunlight, changing from black to blue with hints of purple and magenta, like a shimmery silk sari in a movie. I used to be wild about movies and about wildlife – all wildlife – but ever since I saw a whole flock of parrots on the rooftop, all of that changed. I decided there’s only enough time to be wild about one thing, so now it’s birds-birds-birds.
Yasmin closes her book, which means she is about to ask a question. “Are they endangered? Or threatened? Or anything like that?”
“No,” I say. “LC.”
Now she looks puzzled. It turns out – surprise, surprise! – I’ve said something that Yasmin doesn’t understand. This does not happen often, so I am happy to explain. “LC stands for ‘least concern’. That is what bird people say for a bird that is doing fine.”
Purple sunbirds can be found all over India. They are not in danger of extinction. They build nests everywhere. They hang them from tree branches. Sometimes, they put them inside spiderwebs.
“Inside spiderwebs, imagine!” I say. “Two eggs in a spiderweb cradle.” I hold up my fingers to show how small those eggs must be, and we both scrunch up our noses at the pure magic of it.
Sunbirds hatch enough new babies to keep their numbers up. They are not threatened. That’s why they are coded LC. My words come tumbling out all over these wonderful and amazing facts.
“Least concern and iridescent? Most excellent,” says Yasmin, which makes us both giggle.
Sometimes we get this way, Yasmin and me. One of us will start and then the other one will catch the bug. Laughing is like running downstairs at top speed. It’s hard to stop.
From across the aisle, our friend Anil cries, “Hiya!” He karate-punches the air, which is his way of asking “What’s so funny?”
We try to explain about birds and extinction and least concern and most excellent, not to mention iridescent, but as the bus pulls up outside our school and we prepare to get off, we are laughing too hard to talk. Anil rolls his eyes at us, but he is grinning too.
“Hey, watch your step, you three,” our bus driver cautions. “Life is not a joke, you know. You birdies need to work hard in school!”
That sets us off all over again, so by the time we reach our classroom, Yasmin and I are still overflowing with giggles and even Anil is chuckling. It’s nice when all three of us are happy at the same time.
Excerpted with permission from Birds on the Brain, Uma Krishnaswami, illustrations by Chetan Sharma, Duckbill.
