Go Go Fly

All children like animals , at least most of them .In the locality we stayed earlier had lot of kids of our age. Every other day some or the other would find a injured bird , orphaned kitten or sick squirrel . Each kid had a proper role to serve- some were assigned job for taking care of the needy animal ,bully boys were watch guards , some were supposed to provide for temporary residence and then little girls were responsible for food supply. Usually the animal used to get well and sneak out of captivity . Whenever it happened there was a grief all around . There would be frantic searches in bushes , dug up holes and in houses of suspects. Failure in search would eventually take form of blame game , fights and imaginary stories . For few days every one would carry the loss of guest animal in their heart only to be replaced by shout for new discovery " Ae mil gaya mil gaya ...kabutar hain , pankh tuta hua hai " .

Me and sister would never get a chance to keep any animal home as it was the privilege of senior kids. We both wished to have our 100% ownership pet , whom we wont share with anybody and then the day arrived soon. Papa bought us caged parrot , two in a small cage.

We were very happy as parrots were novel and we enjoyed envied eyes of others. Parrots were given every thing possible to eat, there cage would always smell of guava, chillies mixed with their dumping. We watched their behaviour very closely and their well being mattered most during those days. My sister tried a lot to make parrots repeat few words , but they never talked . After a month or so they still were scared of us and beat their wings vigorously whenever we neared them which made us sad.

One evening i still remember a flock of free parrots flew by making lot of noise and our birds in cage became very restless and gave out of shrill screams. My sister looked at me and i just said " may be there was their mother in the group which flew by " . Something changed from then onwards , we both wanted to free our birds and wished they could find their home again. Next morning before leaving for school , we gave a sumptuous breakfast to our parrots and opened the cage. There they went towards the open sky , their green wings happily slapping the morning air. They circled thrice around our home and my younger sister started clapping overjoyedly and shouted - Go Go Fly .

Our hearts were more happy when we gifted freedom to our caged guest than on they day papa had got them for us. Two more times our parents got us caged birds , but stopped when they realised that their daughters love freedom to caged security.