Sticks and Stones

I stood on an open-air train platform one day this week, waiting in the afternoon humidity, overhead fans whirring noisily above. Old women in worn saris sat lazily on the benches, quietly discussing the gossip of the day. Men in slacks dialed buttons on their cell phones, while older men with less fortunate lives smoked bidis and spat on the ground. 

A large black crow and its buddies swooped down onto the empty tracks, searching for morsels to peck at, or stems to carry off. After some deliberation, one crow decided upon a small twig, and with just a little effort, lifted itself into the air, carrying the twig precariously in its beak. It landed on the metal support beams above the tracks, and placed the twig crosswise, adding it to a small collection of similarly shaped items. The crow looked at the new twig, then adjusted the placement with its beak, once, then twice, before settling on the best angle. Surveying its surroundings, the crow then jumped into the abyss of sweltering empty space and flew to join others in a congregation just down the way. 

As I looked up at the small collection of twigs, collected and carefully positioned by the crow, I realized that in fact they were not twigs, but that many of them were long pieces of rubber-coated wire and plastic zip-ties - the beginnings of a make-shift nest, with whatever materials the crow found suitable among the rubbish and chaos of this massive city. 

Images of women washing clothes, men soaping up from buckets for their bath, children playing with sticks and garbage came to me, and the dwellings in which those people find themselves was suddenly familiar. Walls of corrugated sheet metal, window curtains of discarded canvas signs, roofs covered in old rags, soccer fields of trash. Yet not everything is discarded goods. Handmade wooden ladders lead to second-story rooms made of earthen bricks. Stones and bricks are stacked into pathway walls.

We all have to make do with what we've got.