Appoint yourself to the task because you and the sparrow had a memorable relationship. Remember her wake-up knock at your window every morning since you came here a few months back. Press a hand to your chest when you saw her lying smashed to the ground right in front of Tilaka Illam, the house your dad built, that you and Chinni shared for twenty-six long years.
Listen to the two-wheelers, at the rate of three per minute whipping across the suburban trail thud-thudding through her tiny heart, before and after it had halted. Like yours did when Chinni screamed, “He is sexually impotent,” in the court. Recall your twenty-sixth anniversary when, eyes brimming with tears, mouth foaming with helpless saliva, her outburst took her lawyer by surprise. Shocked, your lawyer sneered at her lawyer, demanding an explanation for this sudden twist. Meanwhile, the judge looked at both of you asking, “Kids?” and then flipped through your case file, as Chinni’s lawyer mentioned, “Two, by IVF.”
Place a wire fence around the spot, create a barricade indicating a diversion in traffic. Decide to bury her in your garden but sand lorries and trucks had started plying. Kneel on the road, the tar particles digging into your knee caps, to check the lifeless body on the ground for signs of life. For a second, you are in the sparrow’s body and you can feel her exhaustion, pain, and relief at last in death.
Think about the first ten years of your marriage–a jumble of night scenes where Chinni chuckles softly, then begs, then resorts to Reiki for transmuting her unspent libido, while you buried all your helplessness in newspapers, reading them from first to last page, then at the clinic, filling the plastic cup and praying for at least one or two to get up, do the work.
Feel the heat of the midday sun down your back, as you lean closer to find the sparrow’s chest a bit ballooned still. Prod the skin under the wafer bunch of blue-green-brown feathers for any air trapped in the lungs or belly. Step back when you see the big bunch of ants. Watch as more crawlies emerge, from under, all of them lethargic from the feeding. Breathe deep before you confront the nothingness underneath.
Pan out the last day court scene in your head. Chinni in a Rani pink saree, with matching thread jewellery and an oversized nose-pin. Adhu in a black tee shirt and shorts–his eyes on the door, ready to rush out and play. Anju in her nondescript maxi/top and that black hoodie she never missed wearing, hunched, her hands in the pockets. Defences and evidence stacked to prove that the marriage was never consummated. Papers signed; goodbyes mumbled. She parted from you as the Virgin Mary. You were the man who never manned up.
Shoo off the stray dogs and cats poking through the metal barricade to scavenge and the motorcyclists, cyclists and pedestrians slowing/stopping to pry. Discard the thick dustpan, run into Tilaka Illam to break a sheet from your divorce file marked Chinni and Jayant. Get back on your knees. With a racing heart, gently slip the sheet under the remains.
Feel your heart sink when the beak, feathers and tail that appeared distinct before, disintegrated like sand art. Scoop and sweep the soil the bird was in until the colours merge, become inseparable from the road dirt. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
