Our urban companions.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Many Old Delhi citizens keep pigeons as beloved pets, exhaust a great fortune on their daily meals, and fly them over the rooftops twice a day. The Walled City’s pigeon culture is routinely celebrated in books and movies.

Now get out of the historic quarter, cross the Yamuna and drive to zila Ghaziabad in the eastern part of Delhi-NCR. This suburban world of multi-floor apartment complexes is punctuated by sudden shanties and weather-beaten walls. Note the walls. So many have hand-painted signs asking: Kya aap kabutaron se pareshan hain? (Are you being harassed by pigeons?).

What appeared to be poetic in the Walled City is being seen as a nuisance in the newest parts of the megapolis. The wall ads offer jaalis as protection from the pigeons.

The suburban attitude to these birds is nevertheless not completely hostile.

Take this Ghaziabad apartment complex. Pigeons are lurking almost everywhere. One is perched atop the elevator shaft, another is balancing its claws on a staircase balustrade. Indeed, the area’s housing societies seem to double up as pigeon shelters. So much at home do these bold birds feel in these buildings that they don’t budge a single inch on spotting an approaching human.

Since Old Delhi isn’t lush with trees, one assumes that pigeons have no choice but to linger amid the congested neighbourhoods. The sprawling suburbs are no desert, yet the pigeons prefer to stray towards the concrete. Maybe because many people feed them grains, remarks a resident, pointing towards the apartment complex’s community garden. An elderly bauji in white kurta-pajama is standing beside a cluster of pigeons, evoking the opening scene of the classic movie DDLJ.

Additionally, occasional earthen water pitchers can be spotted along the staircases and galleries, presumably kept for the thirsty birds.

That said, these birds are also a source of “pareshan” to humans, often flying into apartments through windows and doors, littering the floor with dirt.

In quieter moments though, the birds pretend to be unobtrusive. This afternoon, in another apartment complex nearby, a pigeon is on an AC unit clamped outside a sixth floor apartment, sitting as motionless as a Notre-Dame gargoyle (see photo). Another pigeon is positioned beside a broken glass panel. In an airy corridor connecting two residential towers, a pigeon is lounging beside a squirrel, both looking like an unhappily married couple with nothing in common between them. See photo.

Here and there

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