The last evening and the sparrows

When the author decided to go abroad for further studies, for five years, he was sure his grandmother would be upset. But she came to the railway station to see him off, and showed no emotion at all. Her lips moved in prayer, her mind lost in it, her fingers busy telling the beads of her rosary. She silently kissed his forehead. He treasured that moist imprint, thinking it might be their last physical contact.

But when he came back five years later, she was waiting at the station, and she did not look a day older. She clasped him in her arms. That evening, for the first time, she did not pray. Instead she collected the women of the neighbourhood, got an old, decrepit drum, and for several hours sang songs of the home-coming of warriors. She had to be persuaded to stop, to avoid overtiring herself.

The next morning she was taken ill. It was only a mild fever, and the doctor said it would soon pass. But she said her end was near. She had missed her prayers the night before for the first time, she said, and now she was not going to waste any more time talking to anyone. She lay peacefully in bed, praying and telling her beads, until her lips stopped moving and the rosary fell from her lifeless fingers.

In the evening, as the family went to bring her body for the cremation, they saw a strange sight. Thousands of sparrows sat scattered on the floor and in the verandah, all around her body. There was no chirruping. The author's mother threw them some bread crumbs, but they took no notice. When the body was carried off, they flew away quietly. The next morning, the sweeper swept the bread crumbs into the dustbin.

Their silence seems to show that the birds, too, were mourning the friend who had fed them every day.