CHENNAI: In another episode of things that gave me an immeasurable amount of discomfort in my life, last week I woke up to a strange, aggressive fluttering sound coming from downstairs. I plopped out of bed and decided to put my investigator glasses on, clearly feeling braver than I should have. A flying rat pigeon met me in my bathroom, where it stayed for a period of eight hours. To give you some context: I’m afraid of pigeons. So terribly afraid. These are perplexing creatures who would rather poop on cars and walk to the bus stop with us than soar the skies and make homes above tall treetops. I really love animals, all of them apart from pigeons. What do pigeons do? What do they stand for? Can they even stand or do they just fall over? Do they kill bugs for us? Is their poop an essential ingredient in whitening pens? Are they the genetically unfortunate cousins of doves?
Looking back at my two open windows, I realised where it started to go drastically wrong. I ran, screamed, schemed and cried for eight hours, after which Mr Pigeon showed himself out, not at all elegantly, leaving little presents behind in his wake. I wanted to punch the stupid bird in his face. Is that normal? To want to punch a pigeon? If I wasn’t so afraid of it I actually might have. The real question to ask is: does the fact that I’m a (struggling/mostly) vegetarian balance it out? Since nobody is perfect, is karma really all about doing as many evil deeds as good ones? Should I punch more pigeons? What if I punch pigeons and save chickens?
It took hours for my unhinged and uninvited house guest to leave, after which I finally hit pause on the panic button. The stress started to show on my face. It stayed, much after I disinfected the entire apartment and took a shower, scrubbing my skin off. In desperate need of reinforcements, I called up my mother and took a deep dive into my beauty shelves, to find Tata Harper’s Aromatic Stress Treatment. The combination of neroli and frankincense found home on my pressure points, anxious screaming slowly melting into disgruntled mumbling.
When I’m super stressed, I always pick on my skin. It’s a nasty habit which I’m currently working on, but if you do the same and can’t seem to shake the habit, invest in vitamin C serums. Combined with glycolic acid, these work super well on pigmentation and skin-picking scars. The other morning I woke up to a pigeon flinging itself into my closed windows — presumably attacking its own reflection. I tried to scare it off and may cover these windows with plywood till my stalking birds migrate to a neighbour I don’t like. Can they smell fear? Are they following me? Did I offend the stupid bird at some point of my life? If everyone decided to hate pigeons instead of each other, the world would be an infinitely better place. More anon.
Saumya R Chawla @pixie.secrets