Surprises never cease to crop up in my beloved Delhi- even in this rapidly degrading Delhi- the Delhi of urban madness, the Delhi of frequent road rage, the Delhi of traffic snarls, the Delhi of extreme poverty, the Delhi of sub-human ghettos, the Delhi of high octane opulence, the Delhi of brutish rapes, the Delhi whose residents treat the law as if it were a toy to be played with, the Delhi of land sharks with a gargantuan appetite, the Delhi of unending and prolonged power blackouts (although it is getting better now in some areas), the parched Delhi of water scarcity(getting better in some pockets) and fast depleting water level, the Delhi of shrinking green spaces, especially its lungs, the dense ridge, slaughtered mercilessly at several patches to make way for so called development projects, the Delhi, whose majestic river, the Yamuna, reduced to a gutter now, the Delhi of a large venal political class. Sadly, when I reminisce, I find this Delhi to be very different from the place where I was born and grew up in the late sixties into the early nineties.

However, surprises, which sustain the desire to continue living here, often crop up from nowhere, just when one feels a nauseating decline into an irretrievable black hole. One day, more than a decade ago, in the midst of this epic of urban decay, I chanced upon a brief episode of care, of love, which lifted my spirits, albeit for a short while.

The place where I worked then, in the vicinity of Delhi’s sprawling International Airport, there still existed a few stray pockets of greenery (although they are being rapidly consumed by a rapacious hydra headed monster). One day, as I walked along a stagnant water body, immersed in my thoughts, my reverie was broken by the shrill chirping of two birds – probably a male and a female. The birds, not the usual species one sees in Delhi (probably migratory birds), were circling over the pond and seemed panic stricken. Wary, and correctly so, of duplicitous humans, they maintained a cautious distance from me- trying to scoop down to my level, but then taking off at the last moment. Something in their incessant chirping pointed to a high level of desperation, of a crisis unfolding in a race against time.

Not the one to be blessed with Dr. Do Little’s prowess, I shrugged off the noise to a behavior anomaly which might be inherent in this particular species. However, soon I was proved wrong, as the magnitude of the disaster struck me- on the muck infested, rotting, stagnant surface of the pond, I saw a tiny tremor, so minute that one could have missed it easily. It aroused my curiosity and I leaned a bit further. And lo and behold, trying to break free from the strangulating grip of the muck were three tiny creatures- in all possibility offspring of the panic stricken pair hovering above. The miniscule birds, barely the size of an index finger, had probably fallen into the pond, carried by a dust storm that had lashed the capital a few hours earlier. As they struggled to stay afloat in the poisonous pool (symptomatic of most water bodies in the capital), the strings of my heart (already weakened by a blood pressure problem) felt a strong tug.

I realized that the bird lings were steadily losing their battle to stay afloat against a far superior force. Somehow, I managed to shrug off my indecisiveness in the nick of time, but not before I had raised the hackles of the birds flying above. As I moved to the edge of the pond and scooped the first small bird into my palm, the paranoid birds mistook me for an enemy and made predatory gestures. But as I delicately placed it on hard ground, they realized their folly and ended the chirping, allowing me to finish rest of the task in peace. After I had rescued the last bundle of joy and placed it on the surface of mother Earth, I felt reassured, and trudged into civilized environs again. Having moved barely a few meters, I looked back, and witnessed the protective parents cuddling their young ones-exemplifying all that is human in us, but is sadly getting lost as we undergo a civilizational shift.

The unexpected experience enlivened me to the fact that hope flows eternal, even in the fast decaying Delhi, my beloved Delhi.

And where there is hope, a better future can never be far away.