BABA ... BABA, DARLING

 
One day, Rustom returned from a trip to Bombay with a Nepalese mynah and presented it to Baba. The handsome, elegant-looking bird, larger than an ordinary mynah, had blue-black feathers and yellow flaps over its ears resembling lacework. Its feet and thick, broad beak were orange. Rustom had purchased the bird at an elderly Madrasi herbalist's shop and had heard it repeat a few things in Madrasi or Telugu.

Baba brought it to the women's quarters on the hill and told them that the bird's name was mynah and that it could talk.

The first day, however, the bird was shy. The women waited, but it did not say anything. "Never mind," Baba said. "it has been raised by South Indians, who don't speak Hindi or English. If you teach it English, it will learn, as it speaks beautifully in other languages."

The next morning, when the women were at breakfast with Baba in the kitchen, Baba wanted something from their room. He told Khorshed to bring it. When she entered the room, she went to the mynah's cage to see what it was doing.

"MYNAH!" the bird said very loudly.

Khorshed quickly grabbed what Baba had sent for, rushed excitedly back to the kitchen and announced, "Baba, the mynah is talking!"

"What did it say?" Baba asked, eager to know. She told him, and Baba said, "See, I told you it would talk. You can teach it anything, and it will repeat it."

Mehera was determined to teach the bird to speak in English. The correct method for doing so is to cover the bird's cage at night, and in the morning before fully raising the cover, to lift it slightly, put one's face near the cage, and clearly say what one wants the bird to learn. So early each morning, Mehera leaned near the cage and repeated, "Baba ... Baba, darling."

Mani, Khorshed, and Naja repeated this during the day, whenever they passed the bird's cage. Walu, who did not know English, said, "Baba, darl ... Baba, darl."

The first few days, the bird did not respond. Then, while they girls were playing badminton, suddenly they heard, "BABA ... BABA, DARLING."

Since no one else was permitted on the hill, their first reaction was fear. "Our rackets stopped in midair," Mani remembered. "Who could it be? My God! We were so startled and afraid. Suddenly, the next moment, we were all smiles. We threw down our rackets, and all of us ran inside. We knew it was Mynah. He had at last said, 'Baba, darling.'"

Said Mehera, "I was so happy, thinking that when Baba came, he would say it."

When the kitchen was too warm, or it was hot outside, Baba had his meals in the women's room on his ghadi. That day, Mehera told him, "The mynah can speak. He said your name beautifully." Mehera tried to get the bird to repeat the phrase, but now the mynah would not utter a sound.

They waited for some time, and then Baba said, "Never mind. Let him be. Let's go to the kitchen now."

All left, but as Mehera stood with Baba outside the door, they heard the bird say very loudly, "BABA ... BABA, DARLING."

Baba turned around, surprised and happy. "See how clearly it says it," he remarked. The bird repeated the words two or three times.

After that, Mynah was not only saying "Baba, darling," it was imitating each one's voice and intonations as well. If Mehera went inside the room, Mynah hopped up and down and imitated how Mehera said those words; if Naja went, Mynah imitated her, and so on, each in their own distinctive voice. Walu could not say it properly, but the bird imitated that also.

"For goodness sake," Mehera said, when she heard it, "don't teach him that!"

Mehera recalled: "The bird not only repeated what was said to him but mimicked the person's voice also. If you laughed, Mynah laughed in exactly the same way. He could imitate an old person coughing, or a baby crying. He was a very sweet bird."

When Mani played the sitar, the bird danced back and forth, hopping from one leg to another, tossing its head so the yellow earflaps were "like a woman tossing her hair to the music," Mani observed.

The old herbalist in Bombay evidently had a horrible, wheezing cough, and the bird had picked up this hacking sound. Shireenmai came to Meherabad for a visit and did not know about the bird. She heard the cough and went to Baba. "Merog," she said, agitated, "don't you take care of your girls?"

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"There's someone coughing so badly. I've never heard such a terrible cough in my life! Why don't you do something about it?"

"Who is it?" Baba looked absolutely innocent, as if he hadn't a clue what she was talking about. Then he took her to the women's room, and Shireenmai chortled with delight when she found it was a bird.

When Mehera heard that the Westerners would be coming to India again, she thought of Mynah. "By that time, we will have taught it so much more. Won't the Westerners be surprised when the bird says, 'Baba, darling,' so clearly and beautifully?"

But it was not to be. Mynah was kept in their room in a large cage, in which they spread paper on the bottom. When the bird started sleeping under the paper at night, they realized he wanted a blanket or something to curl up in. They made a robe and put it inside. Mynah liked it and hid himself in it every night.

The east room has small clerestory windows near the ceiling. A contraption was rigged so that the bird's cage could be raised there by ropes. Each day, they pulled up the cage so that Mynah could at least look out at the treetops and get some fresh air.

One morning, when they were in the kitchen, there was a sudden storm. The women hurriedly shut the doors and windows of the kitchen and forgot about the bird.

"We couldn't think of anything, except trying to get the doors and windows shut," said Mani. "Then we realized that the bird was up there [in the east room]."

Mynahs are delicate creatures. The rain came splashing in through the windows, and the bird caught a cold and got pneumonia. Its lungs were affected; it had a sore throat, and its voice cracked and was scratchy. It could not sit on its perch anymore, nor could it hide in its robe. The women put a warm flannel on the bottom of the cage and gave the bird all kinds of medication. Mynah just sat there. When it could not even stand, they knew it was the end.

"Baba had gone down below," Mehera continued. "We each wanted to stand by the bird. We had begun to love him very much. We quickly finished our work and came and stood by him. Walu was washing Baba's clothes, but she washed her hands of soap and wiped them on her sari when she heard that Mynah was very ill. She came in to see the bird. Mynah opened his eyes, looked at Walu, and said, 'Ba ... ba ...' Just as it was about to say 'darling,' it died."

When Baba came, he held Mynah and wrapped his own kerchief around it like a burial shroud. "Baba, with so much love, took Mynah and buried him in front of our kitchen. Baba himself planted a neem tree there. That was the first time we heard Baba say, 'You people have not an iota of an idea what good fortune this bird has. It will take birth as a human being in its next form.'"

Later, a female mynah was brought to Meherabad. The women tried to teach it to talk, but since the bird never learned to speak, it was given away.

The mynahs were not the only ones who received language lessons from the women. A servant, named Sita, who was more like one of the family, was employed to make chapatis. One day, the women dressed her in a skirt and blouse like a Westerner and taught her to say, "Baba darling, I love you."

When Baba came for lunch, they called Sita into the kitchen. Baba was greatly amused when this "Western lady" spoke to him in English.