A PATCH OF SKY
By J. VIJAYATUNGA
THERE are cool mornings when a particular patch of sky I have made my own takes on a fleeting likeness to those never- monotonous skies over the Pyrenees. We are marched off to the Press about half-past seven each morning, and as soon as the doors are opened the " C " class convicts start sweeping out, which is simply a euphemism for raising the dust. For, from north to south, from west to east of India, the sweeping of a floor, which should mean the removal of dust and other particles, is a very crude business. The majority of deaths among prisoners here come under the heading of "pulmonary tuberculosis," and I wonder how much the germ-laden dust of the place has to do with it and with the all- night coughing one hears. In order to escape the clouds of dust, I escape for a few minutes daily to a particular corner behind a side of the building where there is a cement boulder, on which I sit.
And over this parallelogram-shaped area, bounded by the high wall (on the other side of which electric trains run) and by the higher roof of the Press, there is a patch of sky which is certainly no part of Madras. On these cool and cloudy mornings there are patches of pale blue peeping through humps of fleecy white clouds. Of course, in this tropic sky a mild blue sky is of the briefest duration, and the next minute the whiter clouds close in, and a minute later these themselves are covered by grey clouds, but still a soft grey. There is no aspect of nature, neither the mountains nor the sea, which moves the sensitive mind so much as the skies. The grand majesty of creation is never so convincing as when one contemplates the sky. While we must journey to the hills or to the sea the sky forms our roof everywhere. And yet the pig nature of man has so little time to look up at the sky. This brief ecstasy, on such days as I am able to enjoy it, is for me all the more precious because I am now denied the sight of the night sky and of the stars and the moon. Though a born worshipper of the sun I am really a child of the moon, and it has been ever my delight to wake up at .unusual hours of the night to gaze at the moon on moonlit nights and at the sky on startlit nights. We are locked up at five in the evening and let out at six in the morning. On Sundays and on other holidays we are locked up at four or half-past at the latest. This in a tropical climate where the day lasts thirteen to fourteen hours! How yearningly I gaze through my bars at the moonlit courtyard!
I must also mention the mynahs. While I suppose there are sweeter singers, the mynah is most generous with his song in India. At all hours of the day he can be met with on the branch of a tree or on the grass beside one's house. And more often than not he is singing a sprightly springtime song—and it is always spring- time for him. The walls of the Press building are of slabs of asbestos fitted into steel frames. At a height of about to feet from the floor there is a series of plywood shutters, which, when opened flat, give you a view of the sky in sections. Facing my seat there is a Peepul tree, and at the time I am writing of the tree is full of berries, green clusters half turned to purple growing close to the stalks. Whether it is those berries that draw them I do not know, but there is always a mynah (or more than one) perching on the tree. However depressing my mood, I have always been heartened by the gay appearance of a mynah and by his still gayer song.
Sometimes a crow perches for a minute before he is off on his grubby errands. There are other birds of passage as well who deign to while away a few minutes hopping about on this tree, but one can see that they have come from afar and are bound for farther. Here was, for example, once a group of those dull brown birds whom I took to be the Sath Bhai—the seven brothers, because they are supposed to roam about in a group of seven—but from my distance I could not be sure. Then once there was a bird, a com- pact little creature (it hardly had a tail), whose plumage was of a shade darker than that of the parrot and who gloried in a small round head of flaming red. Bird-lore is not highly rated in India, 0 and when one sees an unusual bird it is rarely possible to glean any information by asking.
Once I saw the quaintest bird on the branch directly opposite to my seat. It had a long thin beak and the thinnest legs that ever
supported a bird. Its movements were as slow as those of a sloth.; but though it was so leisured it seldom kept still. Now stretching its long neck for a berry which it seemed not to want, now turning round, it kept me absorbed for more than half an hour. I saw it hop only once. For the rest, it just walked along the thin branches on those thin, precarious legs. I tried hard to sketch it. Its feathers were grey and there was quite a thick fluff of greyer feathers over the breast, and once when it raised a wing I noticed that the under- wing was of the purest white. I never saw it again. I suppose it was a species of crane. That same afternoon, as I was in the yard of our block, I saw the most graceful array of white-winged cranes fly exactly above, then dip, then hover for a second, and then fly away. That sight seemed a happy augury.
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