Death of a sparrow

Their mother had called them out of their wooden home, a nesting box we had bought from Amazon.

One of them could fly away but the other landed on the balcony floor. After a while the father returned, pecked in the biscuit crumbs my wife Jaishri had sprinkled for them to nourish themselves, and inserted some inside the beak of the young one. He seemed strengthened and could fly a foot above to the trunk of a potted flowering plant. We were encouraged and thought the parents will keep on feeding him and he will summon the courage and the ability to fly. It went on, he survived overnight outside the warmth of the nest and then by the evening was perched on the top rung of the iron grill door of our balcony.

“Sh*t!” I heard my daughter Bhavya exclaiming in the next morning followed by expressions of panic and dread. All of us were affected. The baby sparrow was lying on the ground: dead. Maybe he had fallen down.. I pondered on death. Sparrow babies feed on insects who too lose their lives in the normal course of things.. This time it was the pre-maturity of the end that pained us. But then to the bosom of the earth we or our ashes will return. We have to struggle on, hope for the best, yet surrender to the call of the divine whose purpose is not fathomable by humans.