The Woman Who Stares at Birds

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you. – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil 
 
While the first part of this aphorism, perhaps, is a caution to activists of all manner and fashion, it is the second part that I can attest to. For I have stared long at birds, and the birds have stared back at me. Though in 99% of the cases it is the birds that have noti

ced me first, what with me being nothing but a clumsy ape.

In the process I am most certain we have gazed a bit into each other too.

I can almost see the question form on your lips, “And what have you learnt?” I could counter with a question of my own, “Does every life experience need to end in a lesson learnt?” For if we gaze, howsoever briefly, into the human world learning– as in acquiring knowledge or skills– wouldn’t be our shining beacon. Though for a bird acquiring knowledge and skill is often a matter of life and death.

But staring at birds has made me realize a few things about birds and about humans. Birds aren’t indomitable. Their life too is all about struggle and adaptation. No less than the life of any human. Their songs may appear to be joyous and rapturous, even effortless, but like any artist they are almost killing themselves to produce beauty: Pouring huge amounts of energy and a collection of past experience of generations to distill a few notes of sheer brilliance.

If we could suspend our arrogance, our sense of superiority, for just an instance then perhaps happiness would not be a pursuit. Nor the end point of all our pursuits.

The Birds: Painted Stork, Purple Sunbird and a very wet House Sparrow.

Also would like to add that the facebook page will feature more photography while the blog will feature longer writing pieces.

The Bird Hours

Open publication - Free publishing - More birds

These are a few minutes of the many, many hours I spent watching birds over the last few years. Just outside the window or out and about the trees near wherever I lived.

Click on the image to expand and read this e-book.

I spy an Oriental White-eye

Generation next part 1

The first in what will be a series of posts on the young ones of birds that I have photographed at some point in time. With a life span which is a fraction of time that humans and trees spend on this planet, I suppose, the little blue tit on the feeder mimicking another from a generation ago must have paused to think:
Behind Me — dips Eternity —
Before Me — Immortality —
Myself — the Term between —*
*Behind Me – dips Eternity – by Emily Dickinson

I see sunbirds

Inspiration is hard to come by

You have to take it where you find it. - Bob Dylan

Babblers

(All photographs by Anvita Lakhera.)

Identified as drably coloured, in conservation status they are categorized as LC- Least Concern. Anyone who has watched these birds for any length of time would testify that these words aren't quite what you'd associate with them, in normal parlance. For there is nothing drab about them when it comes to squabbling in the undergrowth or simply stalking the balconies in teams of seven plus members. They appear to be most concerned about everything that is happening in the neighbourhood. Gregarious, they chatter nineteen to a dozen and at the drop of a hat are ready to congregate in large groups for what appears to be frantic socializing.

The babbler may appear dull but then that maybe because we see things as we are, not as they are.

Bird on a wire

(All photographs by Anvita Lakhera.)

Life According to Birds

Chapter 28: The Reunion by The Common Myna









(All photographs by Anvita Lakhera.)

Slip, slidin' away

(All photographs by Anvita Lakhera.)

In my mother's garden

(All photographs by Anvita Lakhera.)
Just a few minutes away from the glitzy towers and the decadent malls of Gurgaon is my mother's garden. A few square feet of plants and trees that is home to what seems like a million birds, especially when one is nursing a bad jet lag. Ah! The joy of waking up with the sun and watching them sing their hearts out.