Come Christmas

Christmas is in the air. SMSs and e-mails wishing ‘Merry Christmas and Prosperous New Year’ have started choking my mobile phone. Even the Rickshaw-puller ferrying passengers from Dwarka Sector 14 Metro Station to Housing Societies are preferring to blare ‘Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells…’ on their Radios.

The Patisserie at Tiraha Behram Khan at Delhi Gate bazaar, from whom I buy my regular supply of cakes and pastries, has stopped making plain cakes. Now, he has only Chocolate cakes with a small star and Santa Claus cap thrown in inside. The price obviously jacked up by 25% per cent.

Yesterday night around 10 pm, suddenly some music lovers converged on the road in front of my house. As I peeped from my window, I saw two persons dressed as Santa Claus dancing on the road, and a group of around 20 people playing drums and singing merrily. I told my son, “See, now it’s the turn of the Christians to seek attention. We did our Durga Puja, the Malayalees did their bit with Ayappa a few days ago, now the Jesus-followers are celebrating with vengeance.”

My son, who is now home for his Winter holidays, and interning with a law firm, didn’t believe initially. So, we went out to the balcony. And there they were, singing into a loudspeaker. But there was a difference that became clear only when I looked closely. Two young girls were standing on the balcony of the second floor flat across the road, and the young ‘uns on the road were singing, dancing and gesticulating at them, “Aja aja Mary, I love you very very…”

Mary Christmas!

Who Cares for Koel?

Every morning, my wife Aditi takes her office staff bus to Narela from the ITO crossing. To reach there, she takes the Metro from our Dwarka home. Once she is in ITO area and is waiting for the bus to arrive, she phones me up for a chit-chat.

Surrounded by concrete monstrosities, the ITO crossing is one of the busiest traffic intersections in Delhi – according to an estimate nearly 250 vehicles pass this area every minute.

Today morning also I got her call at around 8.45 AM. But while speaking to her, I could clearly hear whistles of a Koel at the background. Amazed, I asked her the source of the sound. She said it must be coming from one of those few roadside trees in ITO…the bird's kuoo-kuooo was regular, mellifluous and very high-pitched.

I wondered how a Koel is surviving in that area full of huge concrete buildings, tarred roads and hardly any patch of green.

“It must be an urban Koel,” she ventured.

“But how did it come? How could there be a crow’s nest around?” I exclaimed.

And on that note, we hung up.
Will the same Koel sing at the same time at ITO tomorrow?