Bird Hospital

Bird Hospital
New Delhi, India
July 2004

I am in New Delhi with the sole intention of seeing the beautiful, beautiful Taj Maha. That is my #1 goal. After that, I want to suck in as much of India as I can. I want to see the sights, the sounds, and the smells that are so uniquely India. But I am finding this hard to do on this trip. I have a guide and a driver and they are doing everything their could to keep me from people. My trip, so far, has been too sanitary for my taste.

Everywhere we go, they are two steps ahead on either side of me, pushing people out of my way. They clap at others and announce, “Get out of the way, Madam is coming through”. Their efforts, though appreciated, embarrass me. The crowd parts the seas for me as I am escorted in front of every line and I am treated and received as if this was my birthright. No one but me objects to this undeserved treatment.

When I finish exploring some ancient monument I am escorted to my waiting car with the air conditioning running at such full blast that I need a sweater.

One time, I am taking candid photos of the people. My guide watches and waits patiently for me. And when I am ready to go, he announces that he had secured the cooperation of a modern, young Indian couple who had agreed to pose for me.

“Madame, I see that you like to take photos of people. So this family will pose for you. They have agreed,” he tells me proudly.

There, in the heat of the afternoon, stand a husband and wife with their two children. They are ready and willing to strike any pose I ask of them. It is hard to explain to the guide that I don’t take posed photos. But he is so proud of himself. So I just take a few photos, thank them and we all go on our way.

One day, I have the afternoon to myself. I plan on doing some exploring. I wander the streets and am bombarded by kids and beggars and vendors and taxi drivers. They pull on me and call to me and beg and beg and beg with a desperation that is hard to take. Once they realize that they were not going to make any money off of me, they back off and look for their next victim.

I go back to my hotel to seek a little bit of refuge and to adjust my exploration plan. I ask the concierge at the hotel what was the going price to pay for a tut-tut driver. The concierge had a striking resemblance to Sadam Hussein and which distracted me as I speak with him.

“Madame”, he tells me, “do not go with any of those people, they are dirt and they will cheat you. Take a taxi. It is more expensive but you will be safer” he says in a voice filled with a distain.

I thank him, leave and wander outside to a pack of tut-tut drivers. They began to scramble as I approach them.

“Madame, where do you wan to go?”

“Madame come with me, come this way.” Another attempts to usher me to his vehicle.

“Madame, I will take special care of you”, says a third driver.

“How much do you charge?” I ask one of them.

“Whatever you want to pay, madam”, he politely responds. I hate this response because I didn’t know what is a fair price.

“The concierge told me not to go with you”, I tell him in hopes of conveying that I have some semblance of street smarts, no matter how limited these street smarts actually are.

“That is because he has his hands in the pocket of the taxi drivers. He is not to be trusted”, the man tell me. “He is only looking out for himself.”

“200 rupees”, I throw out, “200 rupees for two hours “. The price is so low, I am a little embarrassed. But I have start somewhere.

“So be it Madame, this way”, he says without an argument and even with a hint of glee and I couldn’t believe this price is acceptable. So off we go to his old, beat-up, tin tut-tut.

“Where to, Madam?” he asks politely.

“I want you to take me some place unusual. You decide. Take me some place that my guide would never take me.”

“OK, Madame. I know just the place. We will go to the Bird Hospital”, he says, pleased with his idea.

And off we go down the long, narrow, congested streets of New Delhi. We dodge cars and bikes and kids and cows. Driving in New Delhi is just one continuous game of chicken in the road. Every intersection is a challenge and a confrontation. And it doesn’t matter if the challenge is brought on by a huge deliver truck or a donkey or a camel or a kid. The winner is not the largest or the fastest but the one who doesn’t flinch. We flinch a lot. I don’t think he flinches because he is afraid. I think he flinches because I over-react to every near miss we encounter.

We arrive at the Bird Hospital, which is run by the Jains, an extreme group of Buddhist who believe all life is precious. I mention this because I thought we were going to a hospital named after a man named BIRD. But we are going to a hospital that specializes in the treatment of wild birds. In particular, they specialize in the treatment of pigeons and other small, urban birds.

As I enter the front door, I remove my shoes, as is Buddhist tradition when you enter someone’s house. I hear loud chirping. The smells is offensive, particularly in this heat I can almost taste the smell, it is so pungent.

There are hundreds of birdcages, stacked on top of each other and most of them are filled with filthy pigeons that have been sewn back together again. I can’t believe it. Who cares about pigeons?

Then I notice a public service poster addressing ways to minimize head injuries to pigeons. The poster encourages the general public to encase their ceiling fans so that when pigeons fly into their homes, ceiling fans doesn’t maim the birds.

I have to think for just a moment. It never occurred to me that there are people in this world who may have pigeons fly into their homes and their ceiling fans and nearly decapitate themselves and then these people pick up these gross, bloody, near-death birds and rush them off to the Bird Hospital.

And this happens so often that there are hospital officials who think it is necessary to educate people on how to minimize the potential to decapitate pigeons in the home. I don’t know anyone who ever had a pigeon in his home. This just isn’t my world. It’s not in my thinking. I come from a world that kills pigeons because they are filthy and a public nuisance. To the best of my knowledge, they carry diseases.They can make people sick and they are a menace. They can fly into you and get tangles up in your hair and cause all kinds of havoc. Now I am standing in a hospital, funded completely by donations that specialize in the rehabilitation of pigeons.

I stand there, in the midst of this realization, and wonder about the meaning of life for all of us: birds, mammals, fish, and plants. I probably could spend days, even years, on this thought. But my pandering is interrupted when I glance down and notice a wet, filthy floor and realize that I am barefoot and walking in bird shit, lots of bird shit. I am repulsed. My momentary regard for all life is immediate eradicated from all of my thoughts and morality. I revert right back to my original thinking: all pigeons are filthy, dirty, disgusting birds. And I am not vested in their well-being.

As I roam from room to room to room, my presence reaches the attention of the head surgeon. Word is out that an American is in the building. The surgeon comes looking for me. He wants to engage in a discussion on the current care for pigeons and other wild birds in America. He wants to know how his hospital compares to bird hospitals in the United States. As I cannot believe his question, he cannot believe that we do not have any hospitals that specialize in pigeon care.

“Who takes care of your injured pigeons then?” he wanted to know.

“I don’t know. No one. We just let them die or we kill them,” I respond, now a bit defensively.

“You kill them???? Why????? I denote an incredulous tone on his part.

“We don’t like pigeons in my country”, I say sheepishly, feeling a bit shallow.

“Why?” He truly doesn’t understand.

“I don’t know why, we just don’t”, I say hoping this louder tone of mine will stop his line of stupid questioning. And that is the truth. Then I realize we don’t like a lot of animals in our country. We kill bugs and squirrels and bats and stray dogs and cats and birds and snake and raccoons and possums. And then I realize that we treat animals just like our foreign policy. We take first strike and then talk ourselves in to believing that it is for the good of the rest of the world. We quickly eliminate anything that we perceive could possibly harm us.

As this realization seeps in to my thinking, I am standing in front of a man who has spent his entire professional career on doing everything he can to preserve the sanctity of life for pigeons and sparrow and crows. What a world we live in. And I know this man is right and I am wrong. Every life is scared. But I can’t bring myself to step into his realm of action. This is no part of me that would do anything to preserve the well being of a pigeon.

I stand there with respect for this man. But I don’t want to be like him, not even a little bit. I don’t ever want to save a pigeon. I don’t ever want to see a pigeon that has been hit by a ceiling fan. That’s gross.

Epilogue

Since I have returned from India, I have stopped killing bugs. Most times, when I am in the company of other Americans, I am ridiculed for my efforts to save a bug. I am treated as if my actions are somewhat irresponsible. By not killing that particular bug, I am single handedly perpetuating the proliferation of infectious bugs, so now I tell people, “I can’t kill that spider. I am too Buddhist for that”. Not everyone understands me. But it does shut them up. And maybe I do want to be like the surgeon, just a little bit.