The city of crows

It was a hot and humid Sunday and I was visiting my city after twenty long years. Can I really call it as my city as today it is inhabited by twenty million people. My ownership on the city may be one upon twenty million, provided the ownership is divided equally amongst all citizens. But I am not a citizen either as my work has taken me to a far off place from my city and I keep on changing cities. Now, why I keep on changing is different subject. But I have special attachment to this city as I stayed with my parents in this city for more than 25 years.
I found streets full of energy even on a Sunday afternoon. My mobile phone was indicating a temperature of 35 deg C. It was probably 3-4 deg C higher that it used to be this time of the year twenty years ago. Twenty years ago there was no mobile phone to give you weather update in your hand instantly. I remembered the streets having tall trees on both sides in some what random manner but it gave a pleasant shade to the men walking across the street. Today more than one fourth of the street was occupied from each side with small shops almost opening on the road. The effective width of the road was less than half. It was amazing to see people are managing to travel from one place to another in the big sprawling city with such narrow roads.
I had distinct memories of walking through the street from my home to the city library, a distance of about 2 kilometres. It had many Peepal trees on the shoulder of the raod a couple of Banyan tree and a Gul Mohar tree standing at corner of the road where the road was taking a right turn. In the month of May it used to have a special appearance due to bright red flowers…nothing was visible now.
Surprisingly not even a single appearance of the simple house sparrows, forget about the parrots and myna and bulbul that we used to see in our childhood. The green tress and colourful birds were a part of my child hood. Nothing was visible now. Not even the white or grey pigeons. Only crows were present as they used to be twenty years ago. It appeared that all other species of birds have ceased to exist in my city and only crows were able to survive. Probably crows were the best managers, adapting themselves to the changes in environment as they say in modern management books. The crows fascinated me and I referred some web sites on nature science and see what I has to say.
“Crows are extremely intelligent birds. They are known for their problem-solving skills and amazing communication skills. For example, when a crow encounters a mean human, it will teach other crows how to identify the human. In fact, research shows that crows don’t forget a face.
Many types of crows are solitary, but they will often forage in groups. Others stay in large groups. A group of crows is called a murder. Murders of crows will ban together and chase predators in a behaviour called mobbing. With some crow species, the yearlings and non-mating adults live in a group called a roosting community”.
I travelled the entire day visiting various places in the city- how these places earlier and how they appear today. I walked a lot till I got exhausted and hit the bed in my hotel room immediately after dinner. I saw only crows staying all over the city and the king of crows was seating on the throne, It seemed that there was a battle between men and crows and that crows have won the battle. Most of the men were hit and many of them ran away to another cities (just like me ?). The bunch of last few remaining men still staying in the city were bundled together and were made to remain present in front of the king of the crows. King ordered all of them to leave the city at once or get prepared to die, except one handsome man and his young daughter. The king summoned his crows to keep both of them under house arrest as they will be preserved as specimen of human species in the city museum.