Bird on a Wire

Only moments before I had been half asleep. Now I lay wide awake, every nerve on edge, every sense strained, every muscle taut. Like a moment in a dream when you actually fall off the cliff, and are suddenly jerked back into reality, a cold sweat drenching your bed. None of the rubbing eyes stretching hands routine. Like a motion of the seconds hand- now here and at the next instant another second's gone. No hanging about here. A knife edge- sleep and wakefulness, life and death.

Ok, this will be a bit hard to explain. I do not really have the luxury of diagrams or pictures or any other sort of visual aid. A few words, and a fervent prayer that they'll be enough for you to visualize what I'm talking about. It's not too hard really. Odd perhaps, unusual, but not hard to imagine.

There's a window, set in a small rectangular frame. Small window, single frame, nothing special about it. Set in the corner of a bathroom, looking out onto a sheer wall, behind which my neighbours live their lives, unseen by me, and I unseen by them. Not much of a view, a grey wall. It's for the ventilation, they said, when they installed it. Whoever heard of single framed windows in bathrooms? But then again, it's on the first floor, and looking out onto a wall. Nothing can see through it, nothing but the birds, that is.

It had sounded like a door being opened. The sharp click of a bolt being withdrawn, the slow creaking of hinges as they reluctantly gave way. There's really no other sound like it. You could be sitting blindfolded in a room, but you'd always know when the door is opened. Or, as in my case, you could be asleep, but you would know if a door had been opened. Not soundly asleep, of course, but half asleep, just about to dream whatever you were going to dream of that night. Dreams don't have much of sound really. They are pretty poor substitutes for life, all noiseless and colourless. Life in greyscale. And then somewhere a door opens, and you're wide awake.

The window swings wide open for ventilation. And to shut it there's this piece of string, one end attached to the end of the window, and the other end attached to the frame, so that it can be easily pulled shut. Below the window lies a ledge. And on the ledge a nest. In the nest, a couple of eggs. And hovering around the nest, the pigeon who's responsible for it. Nothing special so far.

I lay awake in my bed, ears straining to hear the smallest of sounds. I had opened my eyes for a while, but there wasn't much point to it. The room was dark. Somewhere outside the open bedroom window, there burnt a streetlight, stray rays from which somehow permeated through, casting a greyish hue over objects in the room. The clock on the wall lay in the shadows, so I had no way of making out what time it was. It must have been quite late though, for there wasn't any sound to be heard, apart from the relentless ticking of the seconds hand. And yet I could have sworn I had heard a door being opened.

And now it gets a bit strange. One end of the string, the end attached to the part of the window which opens out, has come loose. The other end is still firmly attached to the frame. The loose end has been picked up by the pigeon, and assimilated into its nest. The string is long enough, so it is still slack. But one end is firmly embedded in the nest. And the other end tied to the frame. And so it lay as I came in to bathe one day and first observed it.

The dry summer air lay a silent and unmoving spectator. Outside, the leaves of the trees were as though carved into the still night. All animal life had long succumbed to the drowsy summer heat. As I lay in my bed, my mind started to play tricks on me. All of a sudden, I seemed to detect footsteps on the ceiling right above my head. I tried shifting my head from side to side, but there was no further sound. The seconds hand kept up its relentless ticking. Time seemed to move in short bursts, for an instant unsure of what it was supposed to do and then all of a sudden remembering and running onto the next moment with a sharp click. The clicks were ok after a while, when one got used to them. It was the pauses that were terrifying.

It wasn't too wide a ledge, the one on which the nest lay perched unsteadily. And a drop of one floor straight down to the grey courtyard below. The pigeon hovered around, too scared to come any closer, frightened out of its wits by the sudden appearance of my face in the window. The eggs lay cosily in the centre of the nest.

Terror seeped from my brain to all my muscles and finally out through my skin to the surrounding sheets. There really wasn't anything I could do but wait and listen. It was just a single door opening, it could have been due to a million possible, and entirely harmless, reasons. It would be quite stupid if I decided to go and check what had happened, in the process disturbing everybody else. And so I lay in bed listening to the silence around me. The ticking of the clock I no longer paid much attention to, consigning it to the background. My imagination now kicked in. Newspaper headlines floated past- Robbers kill family in so and so colony...Armed dacoits leave trail of blood...And I lay there and thought about all that I was and all I had done and not done. All that I had enjoyed and suffered. All that I had lived, and how in a moment it could all end. In a motion of the seconds hand- now here and at the next instant gone. A knife edge- life and death.

Have you ever filled a sink full of water, and then pulled the stopper, and seen the water sucked out into the drain? Have you hung around to watch as it eddies around, slowly swirling till it's all gone? I picked up the string and felt it tightening. The nest swayed gently as the slack disappeared.

The world seemed to gradually turn to shades of grey. The seconds hand now seemed to move noiselessly. Time stopped its jerky movements and started to flow, and then slowed down, and finally stagnated till all that was left was the moment, like a fly trapped in amber, constant and changeless. And then I saw the string for the first time, stretching straight above me. And I heard the footsteps approaching, and a face seemed to appear at the window far above me, and a hand came out and held the string.

And I wondered what prevented me from pulling it.