Empty nest Syndrome

 When we were small, it was a great happiness when birdies would build nests in our garden. Given the number of trees, there used to be quite a few every year. It used to be a great fun feel watching the pair build the nest, guard the eggs, get the chickling their feed. We used to be party to the entire procedure, feeding the mama/papa birds with tidbits, standing guard to the nest, and so on, without touching the small ones because Aai used to say that birds do not accept the babies that human beings have touched. Once, there was a lovely blue bird that had thus nested. We  used to literally keep a vigil to guard its nest against a big, kite like bird.

Once the chicks had grown wings, felt sturdy and strong, they would just fly away. A chick, I remember, whom I used to feed drops of water and fine grains of rice because its mother seemed to have deserted it and it opened its beak each time I would go nearby, just flew away in my face.

For a few days, the empty nest seemed very lonesome, especially if were a sparrow's nest. All that busy f(l)urry activity, that eternal chirping would suddenly go mute, silent, lonely. At times, a new pair may build a new nest or settle down in the old one. The same lovely process of generation and re-generation would continue the whole season. We used to keep the lovely, at times plain crude, nests with a soft, downy mattress of cotton, thread and plumes inside. At times, some other pair would loot it and build its own  nest anew.

I suppose, every couple faces this feel, that empty nest syndrome, when children grow up, leave home for further education, for a bright future, for their togetherness with their partner. Busy with their new worlds, they cannot even imagine the happy, content, proud and yet deeply sad, lonely feel of the parents left behind. The home, ringing with the loud banging and the cheery singing/whistling, beginning with bathroom to the porch, suddenly appears deeply silent, and yet, for the parents, each shuffling step, with the now creaking knees, is full of the echoes of the little baby now a grown-up adult with a different horizon. Content, happy and yet lonesome, the empty nest syndrome!

Pratima@the eternal advices of happy yet worried Aai-Papa each time Raju was to board the ship, Sanju the plane or I the train!