Independence Day story - Grey Kuku flies away to freedom

A big date for us Indians as today, August 15th as it is India’s independence day. I have a life experience connected with this day. It’s true like some 73 years ago in 1947 August 15th, India got independence from British Rule and it became an independent country. I was not born at that time, but I can conjecture that the day was not the happiest day for the Indians, because the country had to undergo something extremely painful called Partition, and a part of the country got divided and became Pakistan. But let us not think of that, since partition was a turbulent time with riots, violence, killings, women rapes, it was simply terrible and chaotic.

However, this day I do have other things to share, it’s about independence, a live example. It’s about birdie GreyKuku, who was born on my house’s bathroom window sill, it flew away taking its flight on independence day August 15th 2016, three years back.

Greykuku was the only surviving baby on the sill, since its sibling perished falling down from the sill to the ground from the 4th floor. This baby bird was special because it was different, while other pigeons were generally unfriendly, selfish, pecky and unpetable, Grey Kuku was a friendly, petable pigeon. At one time when its other companion baby bird was gone, Grey Kuku was alone on the sill, with the mother pigeon not coming for it for a while but the mom pigeon came back after a while and attended to Grey Kuku so it was grew up fine and well.

I was able to spend time petting Grey Kuku, it used to walk towards me at times at home following me. At one point it was trying to fly, flapping its wings that I used stretch earlier to check its flying feathers out for myself, that bird was proud of its wings, generally did not allow for me to spread its wings.

One day it was flying around but still stayed on the sill. On August 15th 2016, when India was celebrating independence day, Grey Kuku celebrated it by taking a flight to the outside and leaving the window sill for good where it was born.

However, I still encountered the bird twice after this outside on the corridors of my flat and it allowed me to take it home both times where I petted it and left it on the window sill where it flew away again.

This is my fond Independence Day remembrance till date.

Now, I don’t encourage pigeons to lay babies on the bathroom window sill, because cleaning up the area dialy twice is a hard job, and pigeon poop can cause diseases. So, Grey Kuku was the last pigeon baby that grew up staying on the bathroom window sill.

I had earlier interacted with other baby pigeons that were born on the bathroom window sill, but none of them were friendly, pettable and they would never bother to ever accept me as Grey Kuku did, as it allowed me to pet it. Here is a video of me interacting with baby pigeons earlier around 2014.

Notice, how one is pecking away at such a young age, such unfriendly creatures these birds are!!!