My encounter wid an uloo

I suddenly heard our watchman say “Ulloo hai… Ulloo hai”. I was shocked to hear him call someone an idiot out loud early on a Sunday morning. I looked out of the window to checkout wat was going on… The watchman & an aunty from upstairs were looking at the guava tree in the society compound. On changing the angle of my nazar, I could see the “idiot” on the tree. I had mistakenly taken the reference of ulloo translated to English as an idiot. The watchman had been referring to the OWL on a branch of the tree telling the scared looking aunty that the alien on the tree was only an owl. Apparently, aunty had spotted the bird and not having recognized it, raised an alarm for the watchman to check.

I shifted my eyes back to serene bird perched quietly on the V of the branches of the tree. It had shades of brown-gray on its wings. The face outlined by a thin white lining made by its feathers with 2 small eyes on either side of the beak. The face not as conical as in the case of most other birds looked like ours, the beak takin the place of r nose.

After I had looked my fill, I couldn’t hold myself back. I went in to fetch my camera to click a few pics of the bird. After I got my shots, though not completely satisfied, I went on with my tasks of the day, wishing I had my friend’s pseudo-SLR to take a close up…

Every time I walked into the room, I went to the window to check whether it was still der. N every single time, it was! It even rained after a while, not just drizzled, but the bird just sat there not moving at all. Gradually it looked as if it fell asleep sitting right there dripping in the rain, unmoved.

The day went by… and the bird just stayed der. Even the thought of calling the emergency service for injured birds crossed my minds. But I decided to wait on until nightfall as owls are known to be disoriented during daytime.

I even came across a couple of lil kids from r society calling it an “ulloo-owla”… guess they didn’t know ulloo in Hindi meant owl in English … just heard the elder kids talk abt the bird in the two languages and picked up the words… It was pretty cute really :-)

Lookin at the bird even got me thinking where the phrase “ulloo ka patha” originated from; also if the other meaning of ulloo (idiot) had anything to do with the bird. I gotta google on that next…

Finally post sun down, I didn’t see it in the place where it stayed all day. It must have taken to its route finally. After a couple of hours though, I saw it on the same tree a lil to the right of its original position. This got me thinking about its well-being. At just that moment, it spread its wings wide open and flew away towards East. Now I’m not sure if it went away its healthy way or just a few meters away to the next tree. But I wish the winged wonder a happy n healthy future.

It was amazing how we awaited the elephant-headed god on Ganesh Chauthi n came across an owl!!