A Chirpy Tale
How the Story Birds were chosen
Once, the birds of the world lost the ability to communicate with each other. Though they could follow each other’s speech, they could not get along at all. Each bird believed it was better than the others and only its own point of view was correct. The Great Cloud Bird grew quite fed up of their quarrels and called them all together.
The birds came, some willingly, some grumpily, and bickering all the while. The noise was deafening, and no one listened to anyone else. The Great Cloud Bird watched in silence, and after a few moments, gave Garud the signal to start the proceedings.
Garud, who had come all the way from the celestial realm of Vaikunth to help, stepped forward. His golden feathers, so bright that they rivalled the fierce rays of the Sun itself, finally caught the attention of the birds. As the twittering died down to a curious murmur, Garud cleared his throat and began, “Dear feathered friends, salutations! We have called you here for the purpose of determining and resolving, in concert and together…”
The Cloud Bird harrumphed impatiently. “Keep it short, G,” he rumbled under his breath.
Garud pretended he hadn’t heard, but huffily got to the point. “Well, alright, in short… It is no secret that there is much discord amongst the bird nations of this planet. We have become an object of ridicule amongst the other peoples of the world! Even those pesky flying foxes now laugh at us!” Here Garud had to pause a second to calm himself—those squeaky creatures really drove him bats! Recovering, he continued, “This current lack of harmony amongst us is contrary to our avian way of life and we cannot and must not allow this state of affairs to continue!”
Garud’s impassioned words caught the attention of all the birds. “Hear, hear!” called a noisy flock of babblers in the front as a boisterous bunch of grackles began an enthusiastic chant of “Down with bats!” at the back. The others were not to be outdone and created a great din, all shouting at once.
The Great Cloud Bird frowned. “This will not do,” he rumbled.
“I told you this was a bad idea,” hissed Garud.
“We’ll see about that,” said the Cloud Bird and clapped his enormous wings. Thunder rolled across the universe, the earth trembled, and the stars forgot to shine. All the birds jumped out of their feathers and, at last, there was silence. “Now,” he rumbled, “let’s not talk altogether! We need to smooth our ruffled feathers again and find a way to get along once more. How shall we go about it? Wings up for suggestions—WITHOUT ANOTHER SQUAWK, QUACK OR CHEEP out of turn!”
“We could hold a dance, uptails all!” quacked the duck.
“A race, a race,” tweeted the swallow.
“A hunt,” shrilled the hawk.
“A feast,” croaked the vulture.
Then the owl opened one eye and drawled, “How about stories? Everybody loves them.”
“What a novel idea!” said the Cloud Bird.
“Hear, hear!” shouted the babblers again. “Problem solved, let’s go home!”
At this, the birds all set up a great cheer and prepared to flap away.
“Who will gather the stories?” boomed Garud imperiously.
The owl woke up with a start and the other birds shuffled uncomfortably.
“Tooo much work, I haven’t the time,” sighed the heron languorously to the coot.
“I’ve done my bit, bringing the Sun back,” grumbled the raven under his breath.
“Stories are for chicks,” muttered the cuckoo to the crow, looking bored.
“Let’s do it, it’ll be a lark,” chirped the flock of sparrows to each other.
Garud heard the sparrows. “Excellent! Well done!” he said briskly, and before they could change their minds or any other bird disagree, the Cloud Bird ceremoniously declared, “We hereby award the sparrows the title of the Story Birds! They shall henceforth be free to live anywhere under the sun, to gather stories and share them.”
And that is how the Story Birds came to be.
Even today, sparrows can be found in every household all over the world, gathering stories and sharing them. If you should see a sparrow hopping about, be sure there will be a story somewhere nearby.
A Story Birds original.
This story was written for The Story Birds by Rohini Chowdhury and Shaiontoni Bose.
Illustrations credit and copyright © Shaiontoni Bose 2021
Story credit and copyright © Rohini Chowdhury and Shaiontoni Bose 2021
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