Hunched forward on a brown sofa, 70-year-old Ashok Tewani, is intently focused on the cluttered table before him, stacked with magazines. On it a tray brims with glue sticks, pencils, a ruler, scissors, a bunch of pens, and a paper cutter. On top of the magazines, a cardboard box takes shape in his hands, as he meticulously measures and marks each line. Precise and deliberate, he is working on a new birdhouse.
Tewani is on a mission: to help the sparrow population thrive in his hometown Nagpur. “Sparrows today struggle to find places to build their nests. In the past, they nested in thatched roofs of houses. Now they often try to nest near AC units and coolers, only to have their nests discarded during cleaning. That’s why I started making these boxes—to give them a safe place to call home,” says Tewani
According to a 2018 Royal Society for the Protection of Birds survey, the number of sparrows in India has decreased by more than 60 per cent. In some areas, the decline has been much more severe. In Andhra Pradesh, the population has decreased by 80 per cent. Kerala, Gujarat and Rajasthan has seen a decline of upto 20 per cent. The survey suggests that sparrows completely disappeared in Thiruvananthapuram by 2003, and Lucknow has also seen a significant decline as sparrows are absent from several sites since 2013. Conservationists attribute the decline in the population of house sparrows to the unfriendly architecture of our homes, chemical fertilisers in our crops, noise and air pollution that disturbs the ecology.
Tewani is aware that time could be running out. Some of the birdhouses he makes are double and triple-storied, while others have as many as 10 entry holes. These boxes can last for about seven to eight years.
Tewani, who lives with his wife, found himself looking for a fulfilling way to spend his days after his retirement from the Bank of India in January 2012. Two years later, while flipping through Twinkle Star, a children’s magazine published in Nagpur, he came across an article about the declining population of sparrows in the city. “I thought, why not help them myself?” says Tewani. He first started building birdhouses with materials he could find locally. This repurposing of scrap helped him keep the making costs low. Over time, he refined his building technique and standardised his boxes to a size of 14x18 cm. He now gets his own cardboard boxes made in bulk at a factory.
Once he would distribute the birdhouses for free, but after a disappointing experience he now charges a small sum. “One day, I saw a friend using a bird box as a decorative piece in his living room. That’s when I realised that people don’t always value things they get for free. So, I started charging a nominal amount for the nests,” says Tewani, who now sells them for `40 each.
For the past few years, Tewani has made at least one birdhouse daily. “I remember putting up the first box. Just two days later, a pair of birds came and started bringing twigs to place in it. It was a wonderful feeling,” he recalls. “One of my proudest moments came when a lady bought over 50 birdhouses at a local exhibition. It’s heartening to see others sharing my love for birds,” he says. There is Captain Jack Sparrow in Nagpur too.