Hop on, Little Tailor

Children's fiction, Entertainment - By JF on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 - 17:33

Does the little tailor bird bring one luck? Or is it just coincidence that the little girl has everything going her way whenever the bird visited her garden? Kannal Achuthan, tells us the story.

When I was twelve, I believed a lot in luck. If I were lucky, the Chemistry teacher would be absent that day and the class test postponed. Or I would win a prize in that painting contest.

I don't know how exactly I worked it out, but I knew that whenever a tailor bird visited the neem tree in our garden I turned out lucky. You must have seen a tailor bird, no? That little green, white and brown, tiny-beaked bird that goes wichee-wichee-wichee when it hops about? I like the way it cockily holds its tail upright as if to say "I am busy, don't disturb me."

The tailor bird was a frequent visitor to our garden. I was very pleased whenever I heard it before I set off to school as that meant a whole day of luck. Sometimes, I saw it only in the afternoon.

My friend Nisha thought I was crazy (which I slightly am). "How can a silly bird bring you luck? There must be hundreds of birds in town and nobody gets lucky all the time," Nisha said. "That's because no one is looking at the birds. So many people can't even identify a tailor bird," I said. Nisha rolled her eyes and said that there must be thousands of things better to do than spot tailor birds.

Nisha might hold her own views but how did she explain that month when I got a craft kit for my birthday, didn't once forget to bring all my books to school and won a coupon for six Arun ice-creams in a TV slogan contest? It was the month when a tailor bird made its nest in our garden. With its beak, it stitched two leaves together to form a sort of cup and filled it with grass and bits of hay. I don't know why our tailor bird gave up half way and didn't lay eggs.
Perhaps, if it had I would have been lucky the whole year long.

We were to move to a big city next year as Mom was getting a job transfer. I was excited about the big shopping malls and pizza shops. I was sad about the tailor birds, though. Nisha and I promised to keep in touch and visit each other in the holidays.

It was only when we moved to our new house in the city that I realised how cramped things could be. Our house was on the first floor of a big building. When I opened the windows, I looked on to the blank walls of another building set so close that hardly any sunlight came in. The street was packed with buildings and not one of them had a garden. I would be lucky if I saw even a sparrow. School was not bad but I did not have a best friend like Nisha.

I put up with it as best as I could. I got used to keeping on the tubelight in my room during the day. At least we had a balcony that looked on to the road. And, slowly, tailor birds were forgotten. I told myself it was childish to think birds brought luck.

One morning, I saw workmen in the building next door. They were going to tear down the old building. All day long, the crowbars and hammers sounded in my head. It gets worse, I thought, wishing we were back in the little town.

No new building came up on the site. It was left empty for over three months, a surprising thing for a city. "Three families are fighting over ownership of the plot. The civil court case could take years," Mom said. I was glad because our house was much brighter now and filled with fresh air.

Plants grew on that plot of land. It was grass at first. Then a peepal tree sapling. A bird cherry tree sprouted outside my window and put out small green berries after the rains.

One afternoon, I heard the call: wichee-wichee-wichee. I rushed to the window and peeked. Hopping on the bird cherry branches was the first tailor bird I'd seen in a long time. All set with its jaunty tail. I smiled to myself. Things were going to be OK. 

Kannal Achuthan is a journalist and children's writer. She writes on sustainable development. She is also interested in contemporary literature for young people.