Short Story – The Sparrow Song
Photo credit: juditu from morguefile.com
There are sounds everywhere. From the loudest one to the faint ones. Like the sound of a screeching Tyre of a landing flight, a coughing security behind me at the gate standing in mild cold of the dawn, the beeps of a reversing truck, soothing music of a veena from the public address loud speaker which is interrupted often by announcement of the names of passengers who do not care to be on time, the clicks on the keyboard and printing sound of the name tags and boarding passes, the takat – takat sound from the heels of a pretty damsel, sound of luggage falling from the cart of a oldie who can’t push his cart and sound of a fast moving airlines employee for that oldie’s rescue, the hush – hush of a mother soothing her baby to sleep, the continuous beeping of x-ray machines at security counters and other n number of sounds from the source which I just cant figure out.
Among all the sounds I heard this beautiful singing like ‘queech – queech’ by these tiny brown and black shaded birds, the sparrows. There one tiny sparrow came hopping in front of me. It was like – I would describe as a tiny boat shaped body with little round head on it. Its legs are so thin or thinner than this pencil’s graphite I’m writing. It came hopping and sliding simultaneously on the shining smooth marble. It ate something from the floor, probably some minute snacks pieces dropped by that boy who just flew in the previous flight. After tasting its food, it sang the ‘queech – queech’ song again and another boat shaped, round headed, brown and black shaded, tiny pretty sparrow joined him (or her which I probably wouldn’t make out). They had their feast of left over minute chips and were singing the happy ‘queech -queech’ song.
Then it just struck me to check the meaning of ‘sound’. I did checked the meaning on my mobile’s dictionary. It said “Sound is a energy that travels in form of waves through…. “. O..ho… did it just said “WAVES”..? Quickly I turned off my mobile and said “Sorry little sparrows” and “thank you for gifting me this great morning start just with your humble presence”.
-niresh at Bengaluru airport.
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