Imagine being lost in wandering thoughts, while you are trekking in the hills. You breathe in the pristine air as you effortlessly navigate the meandering yet fairly trodden path strewn with comforting dry leaves and smooth pebbles and lined with bramble and bush punctuated by old trees on either side. The skies are a vast expanse of clear blue, speckled with traces of clouds and a mild breeze carries a keen longing for rain, echoing the sighs of the beings that dwell above, on, in and below the soil.
The veil of calm is pierced by something you haven’t heard before and it stops you in your tracks.
A series of bird calls steadily rising in pitch till it hits a crescendo, followed by a startling silence only for it to be shattered by another set of similar answering calls from a different direction. It snaps you out of your reverie, urging you to check your surroundings and seek the source of the sound that triggered in you a faint sense of alarm. And you spot it, as it waits, perched on a tree not too far from where you stand and an instinctive glance to the left reveals the other one. Both remain in their respective places, still as birds in repose, unmoving and unbothered as they issue another series of their calls one after the other, which you realize is their trademark song.
A song that is a characteristic of the fork-tailed drongo cuckoo who is an old resident of the hills that you are visiting.
A.R Sara 