Our home in Pilani, India where I grew up was a typical house on the campus of Birla Institute of Science and Technology. It was a single-story brick and mortar dwelling with a veranda and a courtyard in the back and two verandas in the front. There was a lawn in the front yard, a kitchen garden along the two sides and the back, and a hedge all around to mark the property line.
Ours was a west-facing house. On cool winter days of our month-long winter vacation, we loved to sit in the sun in the courtyard till late afternoon and move to the front verandas in the early part of the evening.
There were many birds around; some even came inside the house through open doors or windows. During the nesting season, we tried to keep the House Sparrows from entering the rooms but did not always succeed. They would build their nests in the cups that concealed the fixture for hanging the ceiling fans or in the ventilators above the windows, and made a mess on the floor. Sometimes they were hurt by the moving ceiling fan blades when flying to their nest.
In the yard, Eurasian Collared Doves, Red Collared Doves, Red-vented Bulbuls and White Cheeked Bulbuls built their nests in the hedge and other shrubs. Purple Sunbirds preferred the fragrant jasmine and trumpet vines. House Crows would move around in large groups and call others when they saw a dead field mouse or chameleon. During the monsoon large flocks of Rose-ringed Parakeets came to eat fruits and berries growing in our garden.
Indian Peafowl, commonly known as Peacock, was the king of the birds. It was by far the biggest and the most glamorous bird in the area.
A peacock in our yard evoked a mixed reaction. Though we liked watching it, it was also a pest. It would destroy cabbage and other vegetable plants. It was hard to protect my favorite flowering plant, nasturtium, from it. We either put twigs across the flower beds or erected small fences around the planting beds to keep them off. These were not very effective but served as a deterrent because they were mistaken to be traps by the peacocks. We got a lot of satisfaction from shooing away the peacocks who were about to peck away a flower or a leaf.
This story is from the time when I was about ten years old.
My older brother Jayant and I would leave for school at around 8:30 in the morning and return at around 2 pm. My mother taught in a girls' school on the campus. In the winter, her school started at 10:00 am and finished at 4 pm. We would do our homework, eat some snacks, and then go out to play as soon as my mother returned. On Sundays and holidays, we had more time for play and adventure during the day. However, the afternoon routine remained the same.
One day when Jayant was sitting on one of the two front verandas having his afternoon snack, he saw a peacock crossing the lawn in front of him. It was a n adult male with a bright blue green neck and a long colorful tail. It extended its neck out in front on each step and curled it up as the body moved forward. He pecked the ground from time to time looking for worms and insects in the lawn as he made slow but steady progress forward. The peacock looked very friendly, and Jayant decided to build a relationship with it. He threw a few peanuts close to the peacock which were gobbled up in no time. Jayant decided that he would feed it every day to see if it would develop a habit of visiting us at the same time every day.
I thought that befriending the peacock would be a great idea as it would keep him from being destructive. I felt that it would be able to look after our interest and tell the other peacocks not to eat our plants and vegetables.
Jayant's plan of feeding the peacock went like clockwork for a few days. The peacock would arrive at the same time expecting to be fed. We wanted to know whether the peacock was aware of the clock time. One day we decided to stay in the room and observe the peacock at the time of his regular feeding.
The peacock arrived at the appointed time and started moving about slowly in the lawn waiting for Jayant to come out with the peanuts. When Jayant did not come out, it became curious. It came closer to the veranda and looked in. It seemed to believe that Jayant was hiding there and extended his neck into the veranda to take a closer look. Unable to see Jayant from there, he came onto the veranda to investigate. At this point Jayant came out of the room and provided the peacock with some well-deserved snacks.
The bond between this peacock and Jayant grew stronger each day. Jayant would sit just outside the veranda and hold the peanuts in his outstretched hand. The peacock would come right up to him and pick the peanuts from his hand.
Jayant wanted to test the limits of the peacock's comfort zone. He put a peanut between his teeth and waited for the peacock to react. We felt that the peacock would not trust him enough to come for it. To our surprise, after just a little hesitation, it grabbed the peanut right out of Jayant's mouth with his beak.
I felt that now this peacock was a close friend and would help protect our garden from other peacocks. My childish expectation did not last long as a few days later a 'gang' of peacocks raided our garden and caused extensive damage both in the flower beds in the front and the kitchen garden at the back.
I realized that "friendship" with a peacock would not be enough to make him take care of our interests which we could not communicate to him. In fact, we were inviting more trouble for our flower and vegetable gardens by encouraging him to visit daily and possibly bring his family and friends with him.
Jayant then decided to stop feeding the peacock. The bird sensed the changed circumstances quickly and soon stopped coming for the snacks at the "usual" time. Things went back to normal and the peacock paid only occasional visits to our garden. We understood that the beautiful bird should be admired from a distance and should not be treated like a pet.