HYDERABAD: It’s a hot, sweaty May afternoon and as most rush to find some shade or grab a soft drink to quench thirst, the 40-year-old Baba Jahangir is on his afternoon mission – to feed his feathered buddies, the peacocks, in the Osmania University campus. A plumber by profession, he has been living in the university campus with his mother and three children for over two decades now and he loves his summer afternoons more than anything else in the world.
Baba, as he is lovingly called and can often be spotted beginning his water mission at the Institute of Public Enterprise in the OU campus everyday, has been providing water for peacocks and other wild animals for the past two years. Anyone can easily identify him as he is the man with huge water carriers perched on the sides of his bike.
After a sharp turn from the main road, nearly 3 km into the forest, one can spot a natural pathway formed by Baba’s daily visits. The forest gets thicker and the make-shift pathway disappears to get replaced by thorny shrubs and bushes.
Accompany him on one of his daily afternoon peacock feeding rituals and you can see that he is refilling the broken mud pots and dishes with water, at every interval of 50 metres or so. Finally near a plateau-like-structure, Baba rests near a small cement pool-like structure filled with water.
He suffered lack of water and he does not want the birds to. So when he got the water connection, the pet lover in him drove him to do this service to the birds.
Today, he travels 4 km into the forest every single day to fill these pots that he has strategically placed for the birds. About a year ago, he started building these bird-feeds that he calls ‘water houses’.
He does this routine twice a day, at 12 noon and 4 pm in the evening, unmindful of the heat and without any help. He makes at least four trips to and fro from the jungle everyday because carrying two 10-litre water carriers singlehandedly on his bike is not possible. So, everyday Jahangir makes around ten trips to provide water for the peacocks.
As he narrates his story, chances are that a peacock nonchalantly walks up to the ‘water house’ right in front of us and if you are lucky and it is cloudy, may even do a dance of joy. “I come here every day. The birds have taken a liking to me. They consider me a friend, not a predator,” explains Baba.
So what drives him to brave the heat and feed the birds relentlessly? Jahangir says, “Until two years back, water scarcity in this area was rampant. We had to fill buckets of water in the morning and hope that it’d be enough for the entire family through the day.
It wasn’t until NVSS Prabhakar the MLA from Uppal constituency got us a permanent 24x7 water connection that I realised the relief that only water could provide. We have MLAs and administrations to complain to. Who do these animals and birds go to? Ever since I have made it a point to do the little that I can to help.”
But travelling 20 km every day, inclusive of all the trips in and out of the jungle, is an expensive affair for someone who makes a meager living as a plumber? To this, Jahangir says, “I do not think about the money, I’d do this even if I had to walk all the way through the jungle. But I’ll be honest.
People around, mostly professors in the campus, have offered me money to do this on a regular basis. Vijeye Devuni, a morning walker and a pet lover, donated grains for peacocks and others followed suit. I don’t do it for the money, but I do accept a token `500 or so that they offer for petrol once in a while. But that’s about it.”