Even now as I sit in my bedroom writing this piece, my friendly crow sits perched on the window cawing and daring me to shoo him away. I ignore him, so he hops on to the window sill and cackles in my ear.  Yes, crows cackle. His persistence pays off; I finally turn to him and ask him to quiet down. He first caws some more and then obliges, but only momentarily. He flies off, only to return with a piece of toast or some victual he’s picked up from somewhere and dines off it, on my window sill! My maid walks in, she ticks him off for making a mess leaving crumbs, etc after she has cleaned the windows. Does the crow care? Not a bit. He just continues with his meal, at the end of which he caws and cackles some more and flies away for the day.

Crows are generally perceived as harbingers of ill omen, especially among my fellow Parsis. If a crow caws outside the window on an auspicious day, the family elders would get into a spin to ward off the ominous occurrence.  Not the most elegant of birds, the beak is like a saw, but his eyes can be quite expressive – cute, sparkling beads. Scavengers they may be, but they clean their beaks straight after a meal, scraping it on any edge to get rid of the telltale leftovers.      

Crows are great teasers. I discovered that many years ago at a friend’s house. Rudy, their Daschund loved to bark at crows. One such bird made it into a daily game. When Rudy would be napping, the crow would caw loud and incessantly, and wake him up. Then Rudy would chase the crow, who hopped from one window to another, with a barking Rudy in chase. Rudy would soon tire, but never the crow.

My personal encounters with crows goes back when I stayed at Kemp’s Corner, it was July 1998, we had incessant rains and winds for a few days, hence our balcony doors & windows had remained shut. When it stopped raining, my mother spotted a young crow huddled outside our window. One feather of the right wing jutted out at a 45 degree angle and blood oozed out. The young crow was traumatized and sat there shivering. My mother soaked some bread in milk, laced with a fragment of a Crocin crushed and placed it near the crow. She stood around to shoo away any other birds that dared come near. For two days Kaa, as she started calling him, stayed on the window sill, and she kept checking on him at intervals, by now his milk and bread was laced with Arnica pills.

When he regained his strength he began flying around, but come each morning he would be perched on the balcony railing awaiting breakfast – bread and butter, and no crust please, cut into one inch squares! If my mother was still praying and I paid no heed, he would perch on the balcony of the bedroom and ‘Caw’ ever so loudly and incessantly that my mother would come to where I was, and wildly gesticulate that I should feed her feathered friend.

He returned at lunch time for rice and some dal or curry and in the evening for biscuits or wafers. One day, the servant had forgotten to get butter, so my mother smeared cheese spread on the bread and commented that he was lapping it up, as he did wafers and Pune’s famed Papdi biscuit. The selective taste buds and no crust of the bread  reiterated the servants’ belief that Kaa was truly the spirit of  our Dalmatian, Mumursh who had died just a fortnight  before we found Kaa, and she had come back to be with Mum. 

Kaa became popular with my mum’s tuition students and our house guests. Sometimes the visitors would attempt feeding Kaa, who would go to peck them, admonished quickly by my mother. Early on, he pecked me on the head for standing on the balcony, next to my mother, who was feeding him. But as time passed, he started eating from my hand as he did from my mother’s. 

A year after Mumursh’s death, we brought home an abandoned crossbreed – Lassie. Soon Lassie decided that crows were to be barked at and driven away. Each morning as Mum would place the buttered bread pieces on the balcony railing, Lassie would get on to her hind legs and chomp away, and bark the crows away. So we had a grill door installed to keep Lassie indoors, while the Kaa and his friends feasted. Kaa wound his way into Lassie’s heart by discreetly dropping some pieces on the floor for her to eat later!

After my mother passed away Kaa preferred to go to our kitchen for his victuals. But suddenly, a few days before my mother’s first death anniversary, my friend was at the balcony and the bread butter routine was resumed.  Other crows came too, but kept a respectful distance till he finished his meal lest he strike them with his beak. Both my mother and I would speak to Kaa and he cocked his head as though listening.

As I started packing to move home, I told Kaa I was moving, he cocked his head in reply and continued eating. He came to visit till the very last day, for his daily bread and butter. The day I was finally emptying the flat, I went with slices of   buttered bread in my bag and laid it out, the others came, but not Kaa. As I left the building, I saw Kaa on the pavement; onlookers must have thought me loony as I called out: Hi Kaa! He hopped on without a sign of recognition.