Aftermath
Written as 2019 came to an end. Who would have imagined 2020?
The last few days have been spent drawing up new battle lines, marking out true friends and enemies. As reports pour in of anti-fascism activists arrested, and innocents killed, many are burning out. A terrible malaise of the spirit has started to creep over us all. Christmas passed us by in a haze, all memory of red and green and gold, Madonna blue and starry silver, washed away into a grey of the soul and the mind. The city was sullen all day, under yellow grey skies that melted into a dark smog. The horizon blended into the sky, giving up in defeat to the vast polluting cloud. Churches were dark, barely lit up. The weather, helped along by a partial solar eclipse forecast for this morning, only heightened the gloom and doom of a most unChristmas. The pollution made it hard to breathe, the thought of fascism over running my beloved country, almost made the breath stop. All in all, very little cheer and a decided lack of goodwill marked this happy day.
The oppression grew worse this Boxing Day morning. The house was dark, the air eerily still and closed. The birds were silent, hidden in the trees. Only the parakeets came to visit, their bright plumage and raucous calls brash and loud against a backdrop of silence and grey. Even they, eternal bullies and conmen, were uneasy though. They gave up and flew away as the terrible air bore down.
As the eclipse began, the temperature dropped. The squirrels stopped chirping, the birds may as well have been hibernating, from the silence in the trees. A dog barked in the distance. Then it passed. The moon’s shadow uncovered the sun. A small breeze danced through the trees and a faint ray of sunshine fell across my balcony for the first time in two days. As the rays strengthened, a small celebration broke out on my balcony and the trees outside. As if released from a strange cosmic spell, the birds threw themselves into an orgy of feeding and bathing. I saw sparrows and parakeets, catching up on their elevenses. The new kid on the balcony, a white throated fantail, brought a new dance routine today. She pirouetted into the water, twirling away into the air in the next instant, tail feathers spread out and her sharp chirk ringing out. The oriental magpies fluttered down, tubby and tuxedo clad. This year, they have taken exception to the shy red vented bulbuls. The water bath ain’t big enough for the both of them, and the robins are out to stake their claim on it. The bulbuls arrived soon after and there was the usual tussle for bathing rights.
The real party though was outside in the trees. Two pairs of golden orioles, flaunting their colour connection to the sun, courted in the branches. The loudest mouths in the neighbourhood, the tiny Prinias sunned their drab feathers, the jewelled bee eaters came looking for a sip of nectar from the hibuscus and bougainvillea that are just bursting into bloom. Coppersmith Barbets toktoked higher up in the canopy. And then, a flurry of heavy winged movement. A pair of Grey Hornbills, nervous and flighty, easily frightened from one perch to another by the resident crows. Grabbing the binoculars for a closer look, I hit an unlooked for jackpot. An adult and a juvenile hawk cuckoo pair, all speckles and fluffy feathers, comfortably ensconced on a thick branch. The crows paid them no mind, going after the poor Hornbills in singleminded fashion.
The sun was back in control of the day and our mood, the hidden menace of the morning sky quickly forgotten. For the first time in a long time, the breeze was cool, the sun warm and the sky blue. The plants responded with bright flowers, red and orange, white, pink and purple. It felt, for a while, like the end of a year, not the end of days.