A monkey's tail and a bird's wings

There's a monkey in the jungle
Watching a vapour trail
Caught up in the conflict
Between his brain and his tail

19-2000, Gorillaz

The only time I visited a wildlife sanctuary was last summer; we had a family trip to some Tiger Sanctuary in Gujarat. We didn't see no damn Tigers. But it was a good experience, moving around in jeeps, with our faithful, rifle wielding guide, who by the way sucked at his job; his expert comments ranging from "Look, a giraffe!" to "Tigers can be dangerous". Yeah, as if I was gonna hand-feed one of them.

Anyways, as I said, we saw no Tigers. So it never came to that. The sanctuary had a biggish pond, with a flock of some very beautiful migratory birds, storks I think. We were watching them in peace when the dumb fella went up too close to one of them, with evil intensions. "Pakad ke dekhenge, sabjii ?". Birds are good at gauging such intensions, and they are good at flying.

So the entire flock flew off, leaving the poor man with no hope for extra tips, and the audience in humor over his obvious disappointment.

But there was something strange about this flock. Flocks of migratory birds usually have a strong sense of unity to them, they move together, following the same migratory path every year, across generations. But this flock had a bird that flew in a different direction. It initially flapped it's wings slowly, moving in random directions. It looked unsure, as if it was engaged in a battle within itself. As if it was fighting some bounds. The bounds of convention?

And then, as the rest of the flock flew farther and farther away, until it was completely obliterated from sight; the bird made a symbolic deep dive, and charged towards a new direction with such a fervor which indicated to me that it had lost all its shackles. And boy, did it fly. It flew like a bird which had just learnt how to fly; yet it flew higher and stronger than I have ever seen a bird fly.

I'd never know what happened to it, probably it wandered off to drier regions and lived its last as the seasons changed.

Or maybe, just maybe, it went to greener pastures and found newer waters, maybe as the seasons changed it reached more compatible regions; and eventually became the forerunner of an entire new generation of migratory birds, which flew on the path set by this one bird.

Until one day, when one of them found it in itself to challenge convention and find its own path.