I am parrot

There is a kind of fullness in going at dawn and standing on a top of a mountain. Not far from where I live—just an hour’s drive—there is such a hill. At one particular spot on that slope, at least a hundred parrots gather together every cold morning. 

I use to think, they come together to play a concert, may be they are gathering secretly and practicing for a opera not meant to be heard by human ears, may be they gather to heal someone at sick bed, may be they know world has to wake up to their song, I don’t know. Or may be they come there for me. What an absurd thinking.

One morning, at the very hour they assembled, I was there. They came in with an intensity, settling close, and for a few minutes they sang. A hundred parrots singing at once—yet in the hush of that mist-falling morning, each bird’s voice could be heard distinctly, precise and separate. And at the same time, the single, vast sound of the flock as a whole was just as clear. To have heard both—the crowd’s singing and the crowd’s individual voices—so sharply, so completely… that is an experience I have known only here in this parrot-chorus.

Hundreds of parrots. When the song ended, all of them, in the very same instant, opened their wings and took flight. To witness that was an unforgettable moment of my life. A hundred parrots flying as one—and not a single bird collided, not one even brushed another—yet they rose, crossed the sky, and vanished.

That moment has opened a door in me. 

A flock of parrots hold such harmony—each bird fully itself, and yet woven into the whole—without stealing another’s sky.

Driving back home, I told to my inner self, 

I got my own space!

I will fly in my own sky!

I am parrot!