Gay-Neck quotes

But pigeons have an amazing sense of direction and love of their owners.

I have yet to see creatures more loyal than pigeons and elephants.

I have played with both, and the tusker on four feet in the country, or the bird on two wings in the city, no matter how far they wandered, were by their almost infallible instinct brought back to their friend and brother—Man.

I shall never forget the day when, through a mistake of mine, I broke one of the two eggs that his mother had laid. It was very stupid of me. I regret it even now.

Who knows, maybe with that broken egg perished the finest pigeon of the world.

It happened in this way. Our house was four stories high—and on its roof was built our pigeon house. A few days after the eggs were laid I decided to clean the pigeon hole in which Gay-Neck's mother was sitting on them.

Though the male sits on the egg pretty nearly one third of the time—for he does that each day from morning till late afternoon—yet he does not know when the hour of his child's birth is at hand.

No one save the mother bird arrives at that divine certainty.

We do not yet understand the nature of the unique wireless message by which she learns that within the shell the yolk and the white of her egg have turned into a baby-bird.

here are two sweet sights in the bird world. One when the mother breaks open her egg in order to bring to light her child, and the other when she broods and feeds him. Gay-Neck was brooded most affectionately by both his parents.

This brooding did for him what cuddling does for human children.

It gives the helpless ones warmth and happiness. It is as necessary to them as food. This is the time when a pigeon hole should not be stuffed with too much cotton or flannel;

It was not at all easy, bird though he was by birth. A human child may love the water, yet he has to make mistakes and swallow water while learning the art of swimming. Similarly with my pigeon.

He had a mild distrust of opening his wings, and for hours he sat on our roof, where the winds of the sky blew without quickening him to flight.

In order to make the situation clear, let me describe our roof to you. It was railed with a solid concrete wall as high as a boy of fourteen.

I had taken him and his parents down the Ganges in a boat. When we started it was about six in the morning. The sky was littered with stray clouds, and a moderate wind was blowing from the south.

Our boat was piled high with rice white as snow on whose top were heaped mangoes red and golden in colour, like a white peak afire with the sunset.

I should have foreseen that such auspicious weather might turn suddenly into a terrible storm, for after all, boy though I was, I knew something about the freaks of the monsoon in June.

In July those early morning views of the Everest are not vouchsafed us every day, for it is the month of rain. All the ranges lie in the grip of the most devastating blizzards.

Once in a while above the battle of storms and driven snow the peaks appear—a compact mass of hard ice and white fire.

They glow intensely in the sunlight, while at their feet the snow clouds whirl and fall like fanatical dervishes dancing frenziedly before their terrible God.

Around us were bare granite cliffs surrounded by fir trees and stunted pines, before us to the north lay the Kanchinjinga and the Everest ranges. Here on the edge of an abyss we released our two birds.

In that exhilarating air they flew like children running from school at the end of the day.

Gay-Neck's mother flew far upwards in order to show her son the sublime heights.

They looked as engaging as new-born babes. The southern wind was blowing right in their eyes but they did not mind it. It is in the nature of the Himalayan eagle to build his nest facing the direction of the wind. Why? No one knows.

Apparently the bird likes to face that which he floats up on.

The younglings were nearly three weeks old, for they were already shedding their birthday cotton-like appearance and had begun to grow real plumage. Their talons were sharp enough for their age, and their beaks hard and keen.

Though the surrounding country was clad in stunted pine trees, yet it was full of bird noises. Also strange insects buzzed in the fir trees.

Jewelled flies fluttered on blue wings over mauve orchids, and enormous rhododendrons glowed in sizes sometimes as large as the moon.

Now and then a wild cat called, apparently talking in his noon-day sleep.

Also strange insects buzzed in the fir trees. Jewelled flies fluttered on blue wings over mauve orchids, and enormous rhododendrons glowed in sizes sometimes as large as the moon.

Now and then a wild cat called, apparently talking in his noon-day sleep.

Suddenly Ghond told us to run a dozen yards and hide in a bush. Hardly had we done so when the noises about us began to subside.

But this was amply compensated for by the piercing cold that possessed and shook our bodies in the early dawn. Sleep was out of the question, so I sat up, and wrapping all the blankets of my bedding around me, watched and listened.

The stillness was intense—like a drum whose skin had been so stretched that even breathing on it would make it groan.

I felt hemmed in by the piercing soundlessness from every direction. Now and then like an explosion came the crackling of some dry autumn leaves as a soft-footed wild cat leaped on them from the branch of a tree not far away.

Then Mokalu appeared with an immense halo of opal back of his head. The lower ranges, as high as Mont Blanc, put on their vesture of milk-white glory: shapes and colours of stone and tree leaped into sight. Orchids trembled with morning dew.

Now the sun, like a lion, leaped on the shoulder of the sky, and the snow-bastioned horizons bled with scarlet fire.

Ghond and Radja, who had been awake already, stood up; then the latter, a well-trained priest, chanted the Sanskrit Vedic prayer to Savitar—the Sun:

I agreed readily. We sat praying for compassion for all mankind.

Even to this day when I awake early I think of those Buddhist monks in the Himalayas praying for the cleansing of the thoughts of all men and women still asleep.

The day broke soon enough. I found that we were sitting in a cleft of a mountain, and at our feet lay a precipice sheer and stark.

"You must know, O Jewel amongst hunters, that no animal, nor any man, is attacked and killed by an enemy until the latter succeeds in frightening him. I have seen even rabbits escape hounds and foxes when they kept themselves free of fear.

Fear clouds one's wits and paralyses one's nerve. He who allows himself to be frightened lets himself be killed.

"

Let me say that I firmly believe that the Lamas were right.

If you pray for other people every morning you can enable them to begin their day with thoughts of purity, courage and love.

Now we dropped rapidly towards Dentam. Our journey lay through places that grew hotter and more familiar. No more did we see the rhododendrons.

When they had gone the frogs croaked, insects buzzed continually and owls hooted. Noise, like a diamond, opened its million facets.

Sounds leapt at one's hearing like the dart of sunlight into unprotected eyes.

A boar passed, cracking and breaking all before him. Soon the frogs stopped croaking, and way down on the floor of the jungle we heard the tall grass and other undergrowth rise like a hay-cock, then with a sigh fall back.

When they had gone the frogs croaked, insects buzzed continually and owls hooted.

Noise, like a diamond, opened its million facets.

Sounds leapt at one's hearing like the dart of sunlight into unprotected eyes. A boar passed, cracking and breaking all before him.

in the light of the fire and that of the risen half moon I saw that their ears were raised tensely in the act of listening carefully. Even their tails did not move. I too listened intently.

There was no doubt that the silence of the night was more than mere stillness; stillness is empty, but the silence that beset us was full of meaning, as if a God, shod with moonlight, was walking so close that if I were to put out my hand I could touch his garment.

Just then the horses moved their ears as if to catch the echo of a sound that had moved imperceptibly through the silence. The great deity had gone already; now a queer sensation of easing the tense atmosphere set in.

Ghond found his track with certainty the first day of our ten days' search for him, but in order to see those things clearly and continuously, it would be better to let Gay-Neck tell his own Odyssey.

It is not hard for us to understand him if we use the grammar of fancy and the dictionary of imagination.

The October noon when we boarded the train at Darjeeling for our return journey to town, Gay-Neck sat in his cage, and commenced the story of his recent truancy from Dentam to Singalele and back.

"O, Master of many tongues, O wizard of all languages human and animal, listen to my tale. Listen to the stammering wandering narrative of a poor bird.

Since the river has its roots in the hill, so springs my story from the mountains.

"When near the eagle's nest I heard and beheld the wicked hawk's talons tear my mother to pieces, I was so distressed that I decided to die, but not by the claws of those treacherous birds.

Then from nowhere walked up to him another goose. (By the way, are not geese the most ungainly birds when they are not flying or swimming?

On the water they resemble dreams floating on pools of sleep, but on land they hobble like cripples on crutches!

) By now the two geese were quarrelling. They pulled one another's feathers, they slapped with their wings, they kicked each other with their feet every time they hopped up above the ground.

"

But every flock has its straggler.

One fellow was left behind, because he was still struggling with a fish. At last he secured it, and flew up in quest of a tree where he could eat it under cover. Suddenly from the empty air an enormous hawk attacked him.

I never loved any city, but this one frightens me with its electric tramway and how-aghari (wind chariot)—the automobile. If I do not shake the dust of this town off my feet very soon, I shall be nothing better than a coward.

A tiger in the jungle does not frighten me, but I cannot say the same of an automobile.

One crossing of a modern city street imperils more lives in a minute than a day in the most dangerous forests. Farewell!

If I do not shake the dust of this town off my feet very soon, I shall be nothing better than a coward. A tiger in the jungle does not frighten me, but I cannot say the same of an automobile.

One crossing of a modern city street imperils more lives in a minute than a day in the most dangerous forests.

Farewell! I go where the woods wear stillness for a dress, the air is free of odours and dust, and the sky, a hollowed turquoise, is not cross-cut and pierced with poles and telegraph wires.

A tiger in the jungle does not frighten me, but I cannot say the same of an automobile. One crossing of a modern city street imperils more lives in a minute than a day in the most dangerous forests. Farewell!

I go where the woods wear stillness for a dress, the air is free of odours and dust, and the sky, a hollowed turquoise, is not cross-cut and pierced with poles and telegraph wires.

Instead of factory whistles I shall hear the song of birds; and in the place of thieves and gunmen I shall have innocent tigers and panthers face to face. Farewell!"

Far off the horizons burnt in a haze of dun and purple. Men and women in robes of amber and amethyst, after having said their morning prayers to God, were raising their arms from the house-tops in gestures of benediction to the rising sun.

City noises and odours were unleashed from their kennels of the night.

Kites and crows were filling the air with their cries. Over the din and clamour one could yet hear the song of the flute players.

But not too quickly. Some must guard the sky above them while the others flew homeward. Gay-Neck held my little flock in a kind of umbrella formation to protect the rear of the receding pigeons belonging to other contestants.

Such is the price of leadership—the other name of self-sacrifice.

But now began a horrible climax. In India during the winter the buzzards called Baz, come south. They do not eat carrion; like the eagle and the hawk the Baz generally eats what he kills with his own talons.

Gay-Neck forgot everything save testing his sense of direction and making higher flights. In other words, love for his mate and the change of place and climate healed him of fear, that most fell disease.

Here let it be inscribed in no equivocal language that almost all our troubles come from fear, worry, and hate. If any man catches one of the three, the other two are added unto it.

No beast of prey can kill his victim without frightening him first. In fact no animal perishes until its destroyer strikes terror into its heart. To put it succinctly, an animal's fear kills it before its enemy gives it the final blow.

I expected to see snow-capped mountains and giant trees, for I thought I was nearing the Himalayas. But no hills higher than our tallest bamboo trees could I perceive on the horizon.

I do not see why a land has to be cold when it is not high.

"At last we reached the battle front. It turned out to be the rear end of it, but even there you could hear the boom, boom, boom of the fire-spitters.

It turned out to be the rear end of it, but even there you could hear the boom, boom, boom of the fire-spitters. And, as a normal pigeon, I hate all fire-spitters no matter of what size and shape.

Those metal dogs barking and belching out death were not to my liking.

After I had been there a couple of days our trial flight began. There were only four pigeons of our own city besides Hira and myself. You know how rash Hira could be.

"

Why does beauty lie so close to death?

Hardly had the ineffable glory of that supernal music overhead seized my soul when balls of fire fell about us like a torrential rain. Men fell and succumbed like rats in flooded holes.

Now that I had risen very high I made my observations and flew westward. Just then a shot pierced and broke my rudder. Half of my tail was burnt and torn away from me. And you know that made me furious!

My tail is my point of honour.

I can't bear it to be touched, let alone shot at. Well, I flew safely home, but just about the moment I was getting ready to go down, two eagles started a fight above me. I had not heard their trumpeting nor seen their faces.

I was very glad to be in an open space. One could see the grey sky low, oh, so very low. And one could see the frost-whited patches of ground where no shell had yet fallen.

Even there, in that very heart of pounding and shooting, where houses fell as birds' nests in tempests, rats ran from hole to hole, mice stole cheese, and spiders spun webs to catch flies. They went on with the business of their life as if the slaughtering of men by their brothers were as negligible as the clouds that covered the sky.

"After a while the booming stopped. And it looked as if the village, that is what was left of it, were safe from attack. It grew darker and darker. The sky lowered so far that I could put my beak into it.

Then they started shooting the sky-rockets. It was dark and clammy like a Himalayan night though it was hardly past noon. I wondered how men knew it was anything but night.

Men after all know less than birds.

"Hira and I were released to carry our respective messages. We flew up, but not very far, for in a short time we were devoured by a thick fog. Our eyes could see nothing.

He did another thing that was not conducive to sleep at such close quarters; he breathed irregularly all that night. Sometimes he inhaled long breaths. Sometimes he breathed fast as a mouse fleeing from a cat.

I might as well have tried to sleep on a storm in the sky as under the coat of such a man.

"Then that dog! Shall I ever forget him? I was frightened when Ghond first annexed him but he got no scent from my body, and the air that rose from below told me that somehow, like a clean-smelling ghost, he had come to befriend us.

His footsteps I will remember all my life. He walked softly as a cat. He must have been a savage dog, for dogs that live in civilization are noisy. They cannot even walk quietly.

Man's company is corrupting: every animal, excepting cats, becomes careless and noisy in human society.

But that dog was quite wild. He walked without noise. He breathed without any sound. Then how did I know that he was there? It was that odour that came up from the ground and greeted my nostrils.

Sometimes we passed through thick forests where stunted oaks, prodigious elms, deodars (cedars) and chestnuts grew in such numbers that their branches shut out all sunlight.

Tree against tree, bough against bough, and roots struggling with roots fought for light and life.

Below them in arboreal darkness many deer grazed on abundant tall grass and saplings, only to be devoured in their turn by tigers, leopards and panthers. Everywhere life grew in abundance, all the more intensifying the struggle for existence among birds, beasts and plants.

Here the indigo-blue hollow of the sky remained untainted by clouds, and untroubled by any movement save the sighing flight of cranes going northwards, or the deep-toned plunge of an eagle into declivities nearby. Everything was cold, keen, and quickening.

Orchids burst out almost overnight and opened their purple eyes upon us; marigolds brimmed with morning dew, and in the lakes below, blue and white lotuses opened their petals to the bees.

Now we were near Singalele. The Lamasery raised its head and beckoned us from the hillside. Its wing-shaped roof and ancient walls floated like a banner against the horizon.

After we had seated ourselves there, the holy man said, "Here in the monastery we have prayed to Infinite Compassion twice every day for the healing of the nations of earth. Yet the war goes on, infecting even birds and beasts with fear and hate.

Diseases of the emotions spread faster than the ills of the body.

Mankind is going to be so loaded with fear, hate, suspicion and malice that it will take a whole generation before a new set of people can be reared completely free from them."

"How, my Lord?" I asked eagerly. The Abbot's yellow face suffused with colour; no doubt he was embarrassed by the directness of my question and I felt ashamed.

Directness, like hurry, is very sordid.

As if he knew my feeling, the Lama in order to put me at my ease said: "Every dawn and sunset, seat Gay-Neck on your shoulder and say to yourself: 'Infinite courage is in all life.

The Lama, after a moment's silence, continued: "You have been told by Ghond, who knows animals better than any other man, that our fear frightens others so that they attack us.

Your pigeon is so frightened that he thinks the whole sky is going to attack him.

No leaf tumbles without frightening him. Not a shadow falls without driving panic into his soul. Yet what is causing him suffering is himself.

"You have been told by Ghond, who knows animals better than any other man, that our fear frightens others so that they attack us. Your pigeon is so frightened that he thinks the whole sky is going to attack him.

No leaf tumbles without frightening him. Not a shadow falls without driving panic into his soul.

Yet what is causing him suffering is himself.

The next morning I told Ghond what had happened. He replied tartly, "Gay-Neck opened his wings to salute the setting sun, you say. There is nothing surprising in that.

Animals are religious though man in his ignorance thinks they are not.

I have seen monkeys, eagles, pigeons, leopards and even mongoose adore the dawn and sunset."

"Fear no more, Ghond. Your meditations have healed you. Now test in the woods what you have acquired here by this means.

In solitude men gain power and poise which they must test in the multitude.

Ere the sun sets twice from now, you shall return victorious. As an earnest of my perfect faith in your success, I request you to take this boy and his pigeon with you.

I thought, the buffalo that in nature looks healthy and silken, in a Zoo is a mangy creature with matted mane and dirty skin. Can those who see bisons in captivity ever conceive how beautiful they can be?

What a pity that most young people instead of seeing one animal in nature—which is worth a hundred in any Zoo—must derive their knowledge of God's creatures from their appearance in prisons.

If we cannot perceive any right proportion of man's moral nature by looking at prisoners in a jail, how do we manage to think that we know all about an animal by gazing at him penned in a cage?

What a pity that most young people instead of seeing one animal in nature—which is worth a hundred in any Zoo—must derive their knowledge of God's creatures from their appearance in prisons.

If we cannot perceive any right proportion of man's moral nature by looking at prisoners in a jail, how do we manage to think that we know all about an animal by gazing at him penned in a cage?

However, to return to that murderous buffalo at the foot of our tree.

I thought, the buffalo that in nature looks healthy and silken, in a Zoo is a mangy creature with matted mane and dirty skin.

Can those who see bisons in captivity ever conceive how beautiful they can be?

What a pity that most young people instead of seeing one animal in nature—which is worth a hundred in any Zoo—must derive their knowledge of God's creatures from their appearance in prisons.

He who fears, even unconsciously, or has his least little dream tainted with hate, will inevitably, sooner or later, translate these two qualities into his action. Therefore, my brothers, live courage, breathe courage and give courage.

Think and feel love so that you will be able to pour out of yourselves peace and serenity as naturally as a flower gives forth fragrance.

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