Death of a Bird- keki N. Daruwalla

             Keki N. Daruwalla was born in Lahore in January, 1937 in British India. After taking his master’s degree in English Literature from Punjab University he joined the Indian Police Service, his first book of poem Under Orion was published in 1970 and his Apparition in April published in 1971. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1984. Daruwalla is known for his bitter, satiric tone and as one who writes from his experience of violence of the brutal nature of man encountered in the police department.     

           The Himalayan Monal, Lophophorus impejanus, also known as the Impeyan Monal, Impeyan Pheasant, and Danphe, is a bird in the pheasant family, Phasianidae. The species was named as Phasianus Impejanus by John Latham after Lady Mary Impey who first kept them in captivity. It is the national bird of Nepal where it is, known as the Danphe, and is mentioned frequently in Nepali songs. It is also the state bird of Uttarakhand, India.

             The poet begins the poem with the whereabouts of the bird which are in a fierce love towards each other. Here the colour of female bird is brown whereas the male’s colour is not been described. Here, a man with his lover goes on a rocky mountainous range and he shoots a bird with his gun. As soon as he shoots the male bird gets the bullet and it gradually falls down, it is almost in a dying position. Here, the poet reveals about the humans cruel that when the bird is suffering for its life, they stand aside and watch it suffer and die. And then they tuck the bird inside their rucksack and with bold stains they walk. On seeing them to pulse the male bird inside their bag, the female bird starts to burst out in tears.

            The female rose, in terror crying!

            With bird-blood on our hands we walked,

and as the skies broke into rags

of mist, why did our footsteps drag? (11-4)

Here the reader feels that the poet reveals the “Unity of Nature” on hearing the crying sound of the bird even clouds showing their anger towards them and the sand is stopping them from going from that place by dragging their footsteps.

As they got afraid, they rush up their pony by hitting it to vanish from the peak to the bottom of the mountain which is thousand feet below in to the river. The scream of the pony makes them even more discomfort. They forgot the way to reach their place. Its starts to become dark they can hear the sound of bear and jackals howling which make them even more scare. He shoots with his gun but each time he misses his aim. The jackals come next to them and sniffle. So they get frightened and joint their hands and get into a cave which is encircled by pine and the couple spends the night where they make love. But they troubled by a sense of guilt. And they wake up to the final kill but their mind is full of extreme guilt and they can only hear pony’s scream and could feel the monal’s wing in the prowling bears in the fire-light-rim.

Finally, both of them slept and both dreamt of a similar dream. It was the dream of their wrong doings to all those species which were hurt by them which made the man to feel so guilty as he could not bear his inner voice he broke his gun into two. That very moment a bird falls dead at his feet shrieking with pain. It is the Queen monal and the lady feels accursed: “For though the bird was near dead / Its eyes flared terror like bits of dripping meat” (73-4). Almost aligned to the curse inherited by the Ancient Mariner this pair of lovers is left without retribution, (sumathy, 46).

According to the reader the man hears all those voices of the animals and the climate of the entire surrounding is been changed. This made him understand the unity of nature where one specie cries for another when it is in pain. All these happenings made the cruel man to change a kind hearted person.     

“I broke my gun in two across the back” (67), from these lines the reader compares this poem with “Hunter’s poem”, the man there throws his gun into the bay to show his guilt for killing the male goose, but here, in this poem the man breaks his gun into two and throws away. Here the man keeps a check only for his hunting because the gun which he threw in the bay could be used by another person, but there, this man keeps a full stop for the entire hunting with that gun because that broken gun could not be used again by anyone.