Tusi-the wild bird

The closest i could get to wildlife was this parrot which i had named "Tusi".Yes it was a feminine name even though i could not decipher its gender.On one sudden whim of passion i had bought the parrot for 200 rupees. The vendor was carrying about 10-12 such birds each in a very small cage. Later, from a bird-watcher friend i learnt those parrots were babies  snatched from their nests, caged and sold as such. Sometimes their flight feathers were clipped to disable flying. Had i known this earlier i would never had bought it in the first place. Anyway i did buy Tusi that day, thinking it as a pet, adorable birdie, well taken care of, who will whistle or talk someday, a companion to my then 7-yr old son.Someday a human-bird relationship will blossom. 

Over the next one year span that Tusi remained with me, it did not grow in size, did not utter one single word, did not whistle at all  and all my attempts at taming the parrot was lost. So I had to label it as "Tusi-the wild bird" All she did was screech and claw and beak the cage.I bathed her, fed her, cleaned her cage. Every morning i checked on her fearing death or disease. She never was sick but also never felt at home and I could feel that the parrot did not like us at all. 

It was then that i thought of releasing her. I gave her three coaching lessons in flying. Closing all windows and door the first time i opened the cage she jumped and hopped here and there, on the second day she flew around the room then perched on the wall. The final day i had kept the cage in the open verandah, she hoped first on the cage itself, gave it a final jolt with her beak and flew out into the open, circled once and then flew to the nearby tree. I frequently used my son's toy binoculars to search Tusi but the wild parrot never came back and i found solace in the thought that she is happily screeching, free and flying somewhere in the open blue sky.