‘Parrots’

My friend was teaching ‘namaste’ to the couple of Australian parrots. They are not of the Macao type. The Macao species is really expensive to be borne by my parsimonious friend. First, he teaches the male bird, thinking it to be relatively brilliant than the female one. That keeps a long distance from him. Then, he approaches the female. Same philosophy. New birds. But, the owner at the pet centre-the shop was named ‘Whale’; I do not know whether they could also domesticate such a socking one- said that the birds would learn to talk, but at a sloth fashion. My friend asked if that could be within a week. She could not make a deliberation for those birds. But, she definitely said, it will talk, what we talk. A standing friend suggested we should start with the English alphabets. A. B…E. He said, it would be easier to learn the E, rather than the A. He reiterated. It was a burden of a heavy mass. Shit came down through the cage. The birds couldn’t resist the new found slavery.

The new owner of the birds, my friend, said to the other one, that the birds would be kept under his tutelage for a lesson of talking. Then, teasing started with irregular tiffs in between. My other friend said he would teach the birds only if the owner is ready to pay him adequate for that.

A beautiful girl owned the pet shop, she might not have been more than twenty-four and she might have been twenty. Slender legs and face reflecting the milk of feminine softness, kindness and other prospects. She wears a sarong like a Malaysian woman-wonder, where she got that. It was the dirty color-yellow. But, spick and…span kind. She attracted visitors with her beauty and uncommon dresses, I felt. I was engrossed at this sight when I entered the shop first.

As my friends talked to the girl bargaining the birds, I noticed her English was not to the notch. As English makes everyone perfect after our masters (colonial) endowed it to us, decades-not, centuries-ago. We must talk in English whenever we get the least outlet. Talking in English is a pride- no, vanity perhaps. To attract the other sex, just throw out few English words and they will probably feel within their hearts, yes this man is really the educated kind. How fuck? But, we are akin to such truths in tinsel towns of the great Indian peninsula.

At once, I who thought about nuptial prospects climbed the ladder down. My friend said, he could just make a good use of the time with that girl. He was supposed to call her, as he had already made the effort of extracting the phone number. I thought how cheap he could be. While I was dreaming of some cinema heroine’s fortune, this one revolves around a tupenny girl, who doesn’t know to speak two words of good English. I remember she spoke a few words and that were all with the blundered pronunciations. I became aware at once, that this could not be my wife, or a good friend. I was very conscious about English speaking girls, even boys. That rendered them really smart. Flamboyance could be evaluated from the way they spoke. I hated that. Smart ones attracted me and only English, ok.

That night the parrots revolved around the axis- axis of my head, I mean. Two Australian species’ birds, I cannot recall the names now, were once taken by my friend to his home. Owing to his sister’s dismissal, he returned those again to ‘Whale’, preferring the parrots, his sister’s choice. The parrots were enjoying paradise at the ‘Whale’; they were relatively free and mingled with birds of other communities in a single cage. They were playing like a game of hide and seek, when we first saw them at the cage with other birds. Flashback- the shit; when they were allowed a separate home with new found slavery of the master.

My friend was the new master. I was reflecting upon those parrots because they were like us. As we go back, we feel like the parrots. We were inside the cage when shit like diarrhea was punished to be execrated on the account of slavery and revolt.

The English we started to speak and began to feel proud of only kept us in the third status. Our preserved cornucopia sank into the oblivion of our own eyes and we were always superficially proud, that later enriched to become our vanity and narcissism.

We can only now remember the famous haranguer, Frantz Fanon. He talked about the irrevocability of our gained status. What can we do, after all? If I say, remove it at once, can we? We cannot, like the quick adhesive advertised in the T.V., which also has a constative factor in real. We cannot undo or regain the genesis. We are the mulatto sons and daughters of our predecessors. And that’s what we are. The black or white spots, whatever, they are, happened to appear in our skins, could never evade. This is indelible. The inscription is like a permanent tattoo, taboo?

We cannot do away with our own Anglophone or anglophile beings. We are imbibers. We are like the parrots. The parrots would probably learn to speak in a month whatever his master, my friend teaches him and that he would learn it forever. The parrots are also the emulators like us. These are pastiches of humanity, nationality, huh?

I have started loving that, as the parrots, who will soon find their love for their master. But, I have no master. I have only imbibed something from someone, I couldn’t recall. It is only like the old age arranged marriages, where the wife generally has to comply with her new imposed husband.

My language is my new imposed husband, like the parrots’. We should not underestimate those parrots, as they are now in the nascence as we were once; the nascence resulting imposition.