Crows and ancestors

A crow, dead? Hung from an Indian elm tree, splayed like black shorts on a fickle clothesline, except this was a glass-coatedmanjha kite-string used to cut off of the competition during the annual kite-flying Uttarayan festival when the sun moves northwards towards Capricorn.

I watched from my balcony through worn binoculars as white-cheeked barbets, rose-ringed parakeets, and purple-rumped sunbirds flew around this shiny black jungle crow dangling between life and death. I did nothing. What could I do, I told the part where memory met guilt.

A few hours later, my mother appeared, distraught. She had seen the hanging crow while walking to buy her meds– Xanax, insulin and statins– at the pharmacy.

Crows are the vehicle of Shani— the Hindu God who rules Saturn, Saturday, and Strife. Crows carry the souls of our ancestors, she said, this woman, my mother, who at 89, was ready to be Ancestor herself. Or was it me who was ready?

But what about crows that fall through the sky and hang suspended between heaven and earth – like Trishanku, the solar king – on a glazed kite-string? Do these crows join the ranks of ancestors? Or do they rewind and stay liminal, stillborn?