The Lost Generation

by Nidhi Dugar Kundalia

  Many years later, here I am in a locality behind Jama Masjid in Old Delhi—a sprawling neighbourhood of large rooftops. In the spaces between a low sky dotted with the blackened facades of homes and a crazy mishmash of thick and thin cable wires hanging like an upturned bowl of noodles between buildings, I can see large flocks of pigeons. In the mellow rays of the November sun they are wheeling around, turning and swooping in unison—like obedient wooden puppets manipulated on a string for this wonderfully coordinated performance. On the roofs of the buildings, some unwalled, men are whistling, tooting and shrieking at the birds, mouthing directions. They are the puppeteers, the walled city’s renowned kabootarbaaz, racing their pet pigeons in the vast, open skies.

  ‘I can take you up to one of those rooftops. They keep a lot of pigeons at homes,’ offers one of the two young boys, still in their school uniforms, puttering about on the streets to avoid the evening shift at their father’s brass shop. The boy instantly recognizes the address I give him of a pigeon flier. ‘He is the best kabootarbaaz of Old Dilli,’ he screams over the noise, walking us through the dense battlefield-like streets of Chawri Bazaar—labourers rushing by with their laden backs, rickshaws plying schoolchildren and scooters floundering through streets lined with copper, brass and paper shops with one-room apartments squeezed in between.

  Kabootarbaazi, or pigeon fancying, finds its first mention in history in the fifth Aegyptian dynasty, in about 3000 BC,1 when people raised them in conical mud coops. Excavations made in Shivta, an ancient abandoned city in Negev Desert in Israel, revealed dovecotes both above and below the ground for pigeon-breeding activities, dating back to the Middle Ages.

  In India, pigeon keeping and racing enjoyed great patronage when pigeons were sent as gifts by the kings of I´rán and Túrán; merchants also brought in excellent pigeons in large numbers. According to tradition, the kulkulain, or competitions, began when the birds were taken to a faraway spot and released to the sound of a shotgun being fired, announcing the beginning of the race.

  Pigeons, with their remarkable ability to navigate perfectly over journeys of several hundred miles, raced their way back home in flocks, guiding each other, sticking together like family. After calculating the distance to the homes of the pigeon owners, the winners were declared upon the arrival of the flocks. Several organizers were stationed at specific points to take stock of how far each pigeon had flown and the corresponding time frame. The first pigeon that completed the route and returned to its proud owner was declared the winner. Nobody is certain precisely how the birds pulled this feat off and still continue to do so. The maudlin reasoning is that if pigeons like where they live, they employ all their visceral predispositions—along with sight, smell, sound, magnetic fields and taste. But recent research reveals that pigeons use ‘odour maps’,2 associating the routes with smell, and travel with them.

  Emperor Jahangir spent days in the company of kabootarbaaz, learning the age-old tricks of pigeon-flying like his father, Akbar,3 who was also very fond of the sport and had many thousands of pigeons in his court as well as his country retreats like Nagarchain near Agra4. He may have perhaps inherited his love of pigeons from his grandfather Babur and his father, Umar Sheikh Mirza, who was a pigeon fancier too.

  Akbar referred to the pastime as ishkbazi,5 and his favourite pigeon was called Mohanah, which became the chief of the imperial pigeons; from it descended several excellent pigeons such as Ashkí (the weeper), Parízád (the fairy), Almás (the diamond) and Sháh’údí (Aloe Royal), and their progeny were again the choicest pigeons in the whole world. Pigeons, back then, were trained to execute fairly complicated manoeuvres including the wheel (charkha), ‘a lusty movement ending with the pigeon throwing itself over in a full circle’ and turning somersaults (bazi). In Akbar’s court, a select pigeon could perform fifteen charkhas and seventy bazis in one session. The Jesuit priest Father Monserrate,6 in his book The Commentary of Father Monserrate on His Journey to the Court of Akbar, writes: ‘The pigeons are cared for by eunuchs and servant-maids. Their evolutions are controlled at will, when they are flying, by means of certain signals, just as those of well-trained soldiery are controlled by a competent general by means of bugles and drums. It will seem little short of the miraculous when I affirm that, when sent out, they dance, turn somersaults all together in the air, fly in orderly rhythm, and return to their starting point, all at the sound of a whistle.’

  The Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar’s state processions in the seventeenth century through the streets of Shahjahanabad, now known as Old Delhi, always included an elephant that lugged the imperial pigeon cage with some top-notch breeds, the prices of which were also decided by the Mughal court, making them a much-coveted possession—almost every noble owned a kabootarkhana in their home back then.

  Centuries later, a few bird lovers still pursue this ancient interest on the same streets. But the streets that were once known to house resplendent dancing girls7 have gradually been taken over by markets with thousands of shops that spring up everywhere in Delhi, like fungus after the rains. As we walk down the streets, the blue skies over Chawri Bazaar are blocked by ceilings. We turn down an alley and start ascending the staircase of a gloomy concrete building. The walls of the building seem to be necrotic, as if affected by a blackening disease. Open urinals and spittoons have been added to the staircase landings years after the construction of the building, as an afterthought. The dark, high staircase finally opens on to the fourth floor to Anil Sood’s rooftop which stands in stark contrast to the rest of the building—it’s surprisingly clean, spacious, and with impossibly white parapets. The city noises fade to a distant hum here—the air growing thinner, cooler. The Jama Masjid, the Pashupatinath temple and the Gurdwara Sis Ganj Sahib jut out amidst the rooftops and half-abandoned homes of Old Delhi. God, they say, is closer when you’re on one of these rooftops.

  Sood is a kabootarbaaz who keeps thousands of pigeons as pets on this rooftop. He is one of the few ustads, an honorific title that is bestowed by the commune in Old Delhi for racing feats, prowess and, in his case, for the over twenty-five years of experience he has. But he is hardly one of your regular bird lovers—the sort who wears a safari jacket, a fragile being with kind eyes, tottering around hill stations, with binoculars draped around the neck and carting a thick copy of The Ultimate Bird Lover: Stories and Advice on Our Feathered Friends at Home and in the Wild. Sood, on the other hand, is barely literate, having dropped in and out of school. On most Fridays he would slip out of his father’s clutches to visit the pigeon market behind Jama Masjid. He is tall, gym-built, with muscles bulging everywhere.

  In the afternoon sun, here on the rooftop, Sood’s naked eyes dampen from staring into the sky for too long, brown irises suspended in webs of red wires. ‘Aao, aao,’ he calls out, a hand imitating the scattering of seeds. Within seconds, birds that were little more than flecks in the sky appear, the soft flapping of their wings soon becoming a thunderous roar. And when the flock finally flaps down on to the rooftop, about twenty of them together, Anil screams, ‘Yes, winner!’ Anil’s birds have just won the race, taking the shortest time to arrive from Ghaziabad—less than fifteen minutes—using the odour maps of their neighbourhood to orient themselves. Three other flocks competing from Old Delhi take a lot more time, some late almost by an hour.

  Over the years, Sood’s pigeons, especially this lot swooping down on his rooftop, of the Punjabi Patiala breed, have won various wagers. The Golas from Agra or the Madrasis from Gwalior are no match for them.

  Days before the race, Sood’s apprentices and compeers gather on his rooftop, practising in the evenings, followed by games of rummy, a few beers and dirty jokes. There is no gathering of owners today because everyone wants to see their flocks come back to their coops. But as soon as the birds arrive, a group of Sood’s fans, mostly comprising his apprentices, cruise up to the rooftop, eager for phone videos of the winning tukda of birds. Mithai boxes are opened and laddus are passed around. Marigol
d garlands are hung around Sood’s neck until it droops, and men cosy up to him to learn a few tricks of the trade.

  ‘I purchased this nasal for a fortune from an Amritsari kabootar wallah. Koi mazak ki baat nahi hai [It is no joke],’ he announces to his audience as the birds toddle away obligingly into the dovecote at the rear of the roof.

  ‘This comes from a lot of experience, bhai. How will I teach you in a day?’

  ‘Ab mere kabootron ko nazar lag jayegi. Bas bhi karo. Chasme Badoor [My pigeons might become victims of your evil eye. Stop it now. Far be the evil eye.]’ He shoos them all away with an air of self-gratification.

  Soon the crowd fades away, leaving Sood and his helpers to tend to the birds. Getting rid of the garlands, Sood picks up a brown pigeon; it has injured its wing, and a red gash runs down to its muscle. ‘The birds sometimes kill themselves,’ he remarks, his voice hoarse from all the shouting. ‘When large flocks descend on rooftops, the younger birds that land first are squashed under the mass of the latecomers,’ he says, gently stroking the injured pigeon’s neck. He has, in the past, lost a bird to hawks and another to bad weather, and a few more to a flu that spread through the birds in the neighbourhood; but this time, just one came back scathed.

  ‘They are far safer in the cages than outside,’ he says, making kissy faces at the bird. ‘Most of our birds live up to fifteen years in here, but strays survive for no more than five years out there.’ Holding the bird firmly in his hands, he walks towards the edge of the roof and flings the pigeon into the sky. The pigeon takes an instant to balance itself, flaps its wings in a concerted effort and then bursts upwards for a few moments, becomes unsteady and flutters right back on to his arm.

  ‘It may have crashed into a slit cable wire,’ he murmurs, summoning his help to pull up a bench for us. ‘I keep them like my family,’ he says with fondness, pointing towards a large cage packed with a variety of pigeons and covered by a mesh. The dark skin on his hand is covered halfway up by a bright-orange linen shirt, matching the orange chappals adorning his feet; his gold rings add to his swagger, while his shirt collar is pulled up in an oddly irrepressible way.

  ‘One evening, I came back from work and found that my favourite pigeon had died. It was of this breed, Hyderabadi Junglay—one of my prized possessions. I was absolutely shattered and was going to sew its feathers on to my cap. I had left it on the parapet and went looking for a cloth to bury it in; I returned to see a cat sniffing it for a meal,’ he says, tapping the bird’s beak. ‘I flung the cat off the parapet and it fell on the roof below us, meowing its stupid brains out. It broke a paw, I think.’ Anil looks up, baring his paan-stained canines in a grin, exuding a somewhat louche cool.

  He inherited his love for these birds from his family who have been flying pigeons for five generations now. ‘My ancestors could recognize the breed of a pigeon just by inspecting its droppings,’ he says proudly.

  He likes to tell the story of his grandfather, a multiple-award-winning flier of his day. ‘After Independence, he took up his belongings, took a rickshaw from his home in Mehrauli and came here to Old Delhi. All he carried were twelve pigeons in a cage which he hid beneath his seat.’ But the pigeons refused to call his Old Delhi flat home. ‘Pigeons are like posters of Madhuri Dixit that you stick on the walls with Fevicol and refuse to peel off when you decide to shift, loyalties,’ he says, laughing. ‘Their first instinct the moment they are let out is to fly back home. They flew back to Mehrauli where my grandfather used to live with his brother. The brother notified him a few days later through a telegram that said: “They are hungry all the time. I can’t give them so much time. Come and get them.”’

  Anil learnt the craft from his father, Ramkishan Sood. His father taught him how to capture another man’s flock and direct it home like a herd of lambs. He taught him to fly these birds like an airplane, with techniques to direct the pigeons to any place he liked. ‘I remember this one day when his friends had come over.’

  Anil’s father was a khalifa, a master of the field—but lower in ranking than an ustad—and had multiple disciples training under him. ‘They were talking about a kit of safed [white] kabootar that my father had purchased just then. These white birds had an excellent memory and great homing instincts. Maine socha ise aazmayenge [I thought, let’s test this theory]. And I set the birds free to see if they would come back to their loft. But, of course, they were not trained. They didn’t consider our home as their home yet and flew away, perching on that red dome of the Jama Masjid,’ he says, pointing in the direction of the smog-covered monument. ‘My father beat me up, black and blue, worse than the first thrashing he’d given when he had caught me smoking. If some other kabootarbaaz caught the safed kabootar, he’d mate them with his local birds and make their breed plebeian. Three days later, the safed kabootar came back and my father gave me another slap to ensure that I never forgot my lesson.’ He laughs. ‘That was the first and last time I made that mistake.’

  Calm has descended over this orange hour of the afternoon, interrupted only by a soft, pained flutter of wings from the injured bird. The help brings Sood a brass plate of pellets—a home-made remedy of powdered turmeric and ghee. Pellet by pellet, he feeds it to the injured pigeon. ‘You experience what it is like to have a child dependent on you,’ Sood says after a long pause. ‘They need love and attention, these things, and thrive under it. If it wasn’t for them, I’d probably be involved in petty gang wars on the streets like most other young men here,’ he says softly without looking up.

  Anil grew up in Chawri Bazaar’s black-and-white underbelly—a world of crooks and paltry politicians, of brothels and small-time criminals.

  ‘I’d sneak up to the rooftop and train my father’s birds—away from the real-estate business I was trying to establish,’ Sood says.

  At first, the pigeons lived in a small, old wooden cage without a mesh. After Sood’s collection grew and it became difficult to tread through it without crunching on pigeon feed, a larger dovecote was constructed with wire mesh, separate cages and wooden lofts.

  Inside, the coop is tiny but clean, echoing with the odd, almost silent sound of the birds, like a breeze passing through a leafy tree. Tiny bangles adorn the feet of the birds—shiny coloured beads strung together, tinkling as they waddle around—a marker of the ownership of the bird. ‘This is the Hyderabadi Junglay,’ Sood says, picking them up and rotating them in all possible ways so that we can see their wings, feet and eyes, remarking on each one’s potential with the thoroughness of a diamond trader at the jewellery shops in the streets below. ‘This one’s texture is excellent,’ he says, pointing to a pigeon with a bright chestnut-coloured breast and granite back, a dusting of incandescence around its neck that sometimes appears fuchsia and, in the sunlight, orange and jade.

  ‘This white one, a Basra, is getting too fat. I have to reduce his ghee intake. The one with the fan on its rear is called Fantail and that is the Lahori.’ Sood individually names his veritable empire of a thousand birds, comprising about thirty breeds in all. There are Indian, Russian, Afghan and Burmese pigeons, and some breeds from countries the names of which he can’t even pronounce. ‘These are Helmets. They can fly for thirteen to fourteen hours without a pause,’ he adds as he takes out a lovely brown specimen from the birdcage with sorrel-coloured eyes. My room is painted to match its eyes. Sundar hai na [Isn’t it beautiful]?’ he asks, misty-eyed.

  On Friday evenings, Sood walks down a few metres to the foot of the Jama Masjid as the sounds of the Maghrib prayers float from one masjid in the area to another, as if passing on news about him and his expensive buys at the pigeon market every week. Sellers come from nearby towns and villages, their cages stuffed with birds of all shapes and colours. Kablis sells for Rs 300 while Basras and Roshan Chirags are priced between Rs 10,000–20,000.

  Most of the crowd in the field consists of onlookers watching the kabootarbaz examine the birds, their flight and strength, scrutinizing their authenticity under a microsco
pe and then haggling over the price. Some old-timers, meanwhile, find cosy spots on rocks jutting out of the hill and tell tales of pigeons from the times of kings and queens. Others indulge in marginal forms of employment—selling tea to weary traders, hawking strings with which to tie the legs of the bird. The market is also considered the perfect place for greenhorns to learn about pigeons, and for pesky teenagers who aren’t entertained by the sellers to find solace in odd bits of revenge, sneaking up behind them to click open their cages, making the precious birds pour out like water, swirling towards sky, mostly towards the sellers’ homes. Looking at them cranking open their much-suppressed wings, it is hard to believe they will find their way back home, or would even want to.

  Sood, meanwhile, lets his pigeons loose for an hour everyday on his rooftop—to fly around, train and, sometimes, to just idle away in the warm winter sun. Three domestic help are hired on a monthly basis to scrape away bird droppings, hose down the cages, carry food up from Sood’s kitchen below and refill the water canisters where the birds are let out to take a bath. A few bottles of essential oil are stocked in a box. Tubs of the pigeons’ bathing water are laced with fragrant oils called ittar so that it is easy to identify the owner of the pigeons. ‘It is a sign of status for us. We can smell the difference between genuine high-quality ittar from fifty feet away,’ Sood remarks. ‘This ittar, chameli ke phool wallah essence, made of crushed roses and jasmine flowers, is a fragrance that I had specially customized.’

  Sood spends so much time on the roof that he has built himself a room here, outfitted with a fan, a television and a bed for naps. ‘My birds need love and care all the time. They fall sick like little children, catch a cold, have flu and stomach upsets. There is this book I was passed on to by my grandfather—it has my great-grandfather’s recipes of home-made medicines for pigeons,’ he says, pulling out a diary covered in an oil cloth. Recipes in blue ink written in Hindi pop out of the yellowed pages. The book is smeared with crusty pigeon poop here and there.