Nightingales have a natural preference for flowers, fragrance and rain washed shrubs and trees. My house and its neighbourhood is on the slopes of a low range of lush green hillocks overlooking the Sawan River in Rawalpindi. Small ravines and rainwater nullahs (canals) crisscross the landscape and begin to sing and then roar as the rain pours. These days it is monsoon season and the rains are aplenty. Trees, creepers, shrubs and grass are freshly washed in their naturally varying hues from deep green to translucent. Puddles do not form around this place as town planners wisely did not tamper with the natural lay of the ground. However, the rainwater flows by in torrents down to the river. It is a treat to see this otherwise sleepy river foam and tumble over boulders, hit its impossible high banks, rise up on the hairpin bends and then flow furiously down to the Chakri plain below. At Chakri the river stretches sideways leisurely bisecting the lush green valley floor and irrigating the same in quiet gratitude.
Nature normally is not vengeful unless we try to tinkle with it uncaringly. There are a few posh housing societies on both banks of this story book river here, which wanted more than what nature allowed them and have stood to suffer greatly. In one case, hundreds of plots were washed away by the angry river flood in just under a few hours. The other, flashier society on the opposite bank did not learn its lesson. The mistakes it made were costly not only for the environment as a vast natural forest along the bank of the river and surrounding valleys was mowed down but they also tried to block the natural course of the local nullahs that feed the river. They had brought in a vast array of heavy earth moving machinery that recklessly bulldozed and levelled ravines, the supporting valleys and hills. In fact, the entire eco system has been mutilated beyond repair. What has come up instead is a sprawling concrete ugliness.
Entire villages, fields and graveyards have been obliterated reportedly after paying compensation. But who will compensate the history that has been erased and the lifetimes of blood and sweat that might have gone into building a small mud and stone house on the edge of the little field somewhere in a small valley floor? Who will bring back the trickle of water through a chink in the grey rock and the chuckle of birds happily picking on wild berries? Who will rekindle the hope and happiness of the merry school children returning through forest trails to their little hamlets, parting ways somewhere at a ridge, a forking goat track or across the shallow streambed? Where will you find the full moon rising slowly from behind a dark mysterious ridge mesmerising the forest and hamlets with its stunning soft glow?
There had to be a method to this madness. Whatever that be but to evict someone from his ancestral lands, houses and burial places is callousness no less than Helagu’s destruction of Samarkand and Baghdad. Those who perished at Helagu’s hands are no more but those who were displaced to make way for the strident housing society live to reminisce and agonise. Incalculable environmental destruction is not accounted for. As a result, almost the entire housing project is built on a shaven and destabilised soil strata, increasing the cost of construction manifold and, in quite a few cases, causing cracks in the buildings. Rains invariably play havoc into their drainage system and wash away roads in places. A gulag of glamour and opulence it is.
Let us revert to our own whereabouts so generously endowed by nature. Fortunately, before the onset of the monsoons I had planted dozens of rose plants that flowered just in time. My house and the landscape around it is richly visited by birds, including nightingales, Finches, blackbirds, parrots, sparrows and many more, attracted by a grove of dense and tall trees. At the time of change of seasons some splendid migratory birds break their journey here. One particularly lovely bird has a long flowing tail, the resplendent plumage of brilliant colours and a singsong call. That tells us that winters are just around the corner. One had made sure to plant trees like fig and raspberry, which bear their favourite fruit. Also to enable them to nest and perch I had planted quite a few chinars and certain native trees in whose foliage they feel secure enough to nest in the mating season. Our neighbourhood is remarkable. They not only appreciate the verdure but also do not startle visiting or nesting birds. I have a pair of grey cranes, brown partridges and tiny Australian parrots that add to the cacophony in the mornings and evenings.
There is a different avian spectacle that unfolds every evening. Just before sunset hundreds of thousands of crow slovenly overfly in their particular family flights headed towards their nightly perches in the close-by British built oil refinery premises or into Ayub National Park across the road from there. This routine is set and never fails to impress for their regularity and sense of collective purpose. Ayub Park is getting a qualitative face-lift and landscaping. One ardently hopes they do not disturb these punctual birds. Their habitual night stop if disturbed can kill them for want of an alternative perch. Crows are very possessive birds. We tried to do that in the flagstaff house in Kohat some years ago and regretted the effort. Thankfully, the attempt was abandoned in time. That flagstaff house was built during British times and had huge bunyan trees in its front courtyard where these birds would rest for the night. Their settling down noise used to be quite loud and droppings disconcerting!
There is a lovely pair of nightingales that has nested in one of the trees surrounding my house and it has a particular liking for the large shady leaves of the chinars and juicy hibiscus flowers. But one was amazed to see them becoming possessive about a regal ruby red rose that had just flowered. Both would fly down, flutter over and around the rinsed petals of the rose and lift it to the nearby branch to tweet for a while and descend again. They would just not let honeybees or other birds get near the prized rose.
One’s reward is in the hearty tweets and playful flutters of the birds, floating fragrance of the flowers and the dense chinar shade where footsore pedestrians rest for a while in the scorching summer heat. A young lad looking for his tennis ball in the hedge walked up to ask why I worried so much about these plants. I said, “The tree under whose shade you stand was planted by someone when you were a tiny little tot. You should return the kindness by planting one yourself where there is none.”
The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan army and can be reached at [email protected]