2nd June was my 2nd vax day. After all the confusions, frustrations and endless waiting that we were collectively going through --- was no mean achievement, this one. It did not start very well though. The hospital in which my appointment was at 9 am and where we reached at 8:45 made us wait for about 45 minutes to tell us the vaccines have not arrived yet. In the meantime, a crowd started forming on the footpath in front of the hospital, where the hospital staff threw in like 5 or 6 chairs. Almost like a habit, a queue started forming -- a long one, there was no question of maintaining the any kind of distance. Queuing and crowing to get a vaccine to prevent the most infectious disease in our history is such an amazingly paradoxical thing to do! And this is one of the fun things that you get to witness in this new world. Do check my little video made with the clippings that I made earlier on.
Anyway, not being particularly fond of standing in a crowded line for anything, leave alone for this vaccine in the middle of a pandemic, I decided to quit. Just thought of giving a check whether any other vaccine Centers are available nearby. And there was one. This one went relatively smoothly. Though there was some mismanagement there was no crowding .
But this blog is not the story of my triumphant vaccination. This one is about a little bird. An Indian Myna. Not the more common one with broad yellow eyeliner, but the one with a little headgear on top of their beak. They are called Jungle Myna, I think. In any case, early in the morning, when the queue was yet to form in front of the first hospital, when the chairs were enough, as no more than five/ six people were waiting for the vaccine (henceforth vaxiniaries) at that time, a Jungle Myna, a baby one, landed on a lady's head. The lady, being considerably perturbed, offered the chair to the Mayna and decided to take a walk. The bird was either too young to understand that we are a danger to her or had a freeze reaction to danger. It just sat there staring blankly at the make-shift pandal that was set up for the vaxiniaries. A couple of other fully grown Mynas, presumably the parents, started raising a ruckus in the trees nearby. But the baby bird paid no attention to them, sat still on the chair. We vaxiniaries all got interested. I stroked its head a little. An elderly gentleman sitting next to it tried to get the bird to sit on his forefinger. A young girl noticed that a couple of crows that looked suspiciously curious. A small team formed to shoo the crows away. a few minutes passed after which the baby bird finally left the chair to sit on that gentleman's forefinger. Everybody hurriedly started giving opinions about where it should be released. but before a consensus could be formed the baby bird flew to the tree where the parents were.
That was the story. It was worth being written about, wasn't it? It is not too small, too mundane. right? In the time where a terrifying disease is destroying the world we knew, when death and devastation is everyday news, where fear has a firm grip on our collective mind, a set of worried people, with their faces hidden behind layers of clothing, got together to save a bird. Somewhere else in the same city, young people were risking their lives to arrange oxygen and medication for a sick person who they are going to meet for the first time. In another house, some others were making arrangements for delivering homemade food to some unknown people who are too sick and weak to do it themselves. a child was writing "get well soon" on the food packets. Doctors who caught the virus were fighting hard to stand back on their feet so that they can go straight back to doing what they were doing before they fell sick. These are not trivial events. This is the history of our time in the making. Maybe a change is coming. Maybe this crisis is awakening the natural kindness hidden deep inside of us, maybe it is teaching us about the strength of solidarity, maybe it is making us aware of the deep connection every little being on earth has with each other, making us instinctively want to protect the other who was a stranger to us.
Life is thrown off gear a little bit. But that is nothing new. That is the way life is, it gets thrown off gear once in a while. The new thing now is that it has happened to all of us at the same time. We now understand and feel the stranger's pain a lot better, because we are going through it ourselves. Maybe that is what will make us want to broaden our little circles enough to include the whole world in them. Maybe we will, at last, engrave the value of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam in the core of our hearts instead of on buildings. Maybe this will make us want to wish that every little bird survives and be able to fly back to the trees and we do what we can to ensure that it does.
A Pete Seeger song is stuck in my head for the last few days.
There's a time to laugh but
there's a time to weep
A time to make a big change
Wake up, you bum, the time has come
To arrange and rearrange and rearrange
