The House Sparrow

Today I saw a house sparrow. And it struck me. I can not recollect the last time I saw a house sparrow. It has perhaps been years. I ran for my camera, but in vain. It was long gone.Many years back a house sparrow was the most common thing we would see-on our balconies and front porches, inside little bushy gardens and the ubiquitous sparrow nests. They were such an integral part of our childhood that they found place in our games(remember chidiya uddh?), in school rhymes and Bollywood songs. And today they are a rare sight.The sad part is we don't even realise or seem to care that they are no longer a part of our lives.

The house sparrow never invoked academic interest in us ,nor was it a part of our early academic discourse. Probably because it was so common and non intrusive, that we stopped noticing it altogether. And hence we never noticed its disappearance. It turns out that the house sparrow is not in IUCN's 'endangered' category. In fact,it is in its 'least concern' category. But in India they are slowly facing extinction. The sparrows evolved with humans for almost 10,000 years. But now, it finds it nearly impossible to co exist with us. In our quest for mindless development, we have cut off every means of survival for the unassuming sparrow. Our gardens are laden with insecticides potentially fatal for them, our specially designed windows to install air conditioners do not have the little space for sparrow nests it once had, our upscale lifestyles no longer accommodates practices which were essential for its survival. They are long gone-from our rhymes, from our movie songs ,from our games and from our lives. Meanwhile, we have developed. We have developed colossal indifference towards our nature that gives us life, we have developed the art of ingnoring dwindled presence of once ever present living beings around us, we have developed our ability to convince our conscience that these are necessary prices we have to pay.

The next time I see a house sparrow, I hope I can get a picture clicked.