EGGS FROM THE COOP

In the past three decades, poultry keeping has become not only a popular avocation in states like Tamilnadu but also a profitable business. We gobble up eggs like mad and at the slightest excuse, order for kilos of broiler meat. At times, we hear animal lovers’ deep sighs over the cruelties involved in raising and slaughtering the fowl in millions.

 As I am a ‘chicken lover’ and not an animal lover, such talks produce only a mild guilt in me. But I don’t fail to poetically compare the olden days when my grandmother raised several broods of chicken in her huge back yard in her village house. When we went there for vacation, it used to be a great fun watching these broods in flamboyant colours and shapes. They walked all around the garden with their ‘cluckclucks’ and scratched and clawed the earth in every nook and corner to find insects and little creatures which they ate with relish. Unnoticed, they often invaded the dining hall or bed room to peck and taste some delicacies that came in their way. As a mark of invasion, they also left their sticky and smelly droppings that you trampled upon when careless.

 Then there was the egg hunt. The layers often chose the coziest places in their opinion, to lay their eggs- in the corner of a shed, inside the cow’s manger, in a grain trough, behind the paddy sacs in the storehouse and even on the roof top. Grandmother knew the behavior of most of the layers. Some still cheated her, and she had to go on a search. We used to merrily join her on such treasure hunts. Grandmother showed extraordinary affection to the good chicks and scolded the bad ones as she shooed them away. They said, “Cluck cluck.”

The greatest turmoil for the brood befell when a guest arrived unannounced. Grandmother would immediately think of Khozhikuzhambu. This means killing a rooster or a delinquent hen. Some birds as if they had super-sense to detect grandmother’s death warrant, would fly and sit on the roof top or on an inaccessible tree branch. The farm hand then would be assigned to execute the death warrant. Smart ones defied and escaped the day to wait for another arrival of a guest and a fresh warrant. When my grandmother killed a fowl for lunch or dinner, she always lamented at least for two days regretting the killing and calling the dead one by some strange pet name.

When I nostalgically look back, I realize that the domestic fowl those days enjoyed considerable freedom, joy and human affection as they lived and sacrificed their life contributing to our wellbeing. Then came our aggressive consumption, matched by poultry science. The poultry keepers said, the birds cannot behave the way they used to. They could no more live in a garden or farmhouse but inside a pen or coop where they cannot even move; get exposed to light only if they are layers and not broilers; get fed only what the poultry keepers thought is right; not allowed to go with the rooster but artificially inseminated; and finally sent to the hell holes called broiler shops to be slaughtered, skinned and sold. Notwithstanding this, I am happy about my khebhabs and tandoori chickens.    

  

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When I was brooding over the country chicken this way, my wife reading the Times of India of July 4^th edition, drew my attention to the news that some of the schools in north western districts of Tamilnadu- Erode, Namakkal and Krishnagiri excelled in obtaining the most number of state ranks in +2Exams. Jokingly, I dismissed her and said, “These districts excel only in poultry keeping and not in education.” Then she gave me an elaborate lecture on how these institutions used ‘poultry keeping method’ as educational and pedagogical methods. I said, “John Dewy and Paulo Freire will wriggle in their graves.”

These schools she said, are resident schools with highly standardized lodging facilities. It seems that children are fed appropriate food in appropriate time. But life for children compares to a regimented and calibrated life of a chicken coop. One school by name Bharatha Vidya Bavan, make children observe study hours between 4.00 AM to 9.00 AM and then from 6.00 P.M to 11.00 PM, beyond attending the regular classes. This means 15 hours of thoughtless drudgery. Worst, even the bathroom walls it seems display one-word answers which the students are expected to rote-learn. They seem to eat, sleep, work and bathe in examination. The assurance is, like the poultry chicks children would acquire capabilities of laying plenty of marks- anything between 1150 to 1199 out of the maximum possible 2000 in the final reckoning. Who knows? One day a well bred child from the best among these poultries may lay the record 2000 eggs of the season. Even this will not satisfy the greedy parents who promote these schools paying in lakhs of rupees.

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The ‘cluck’ ‘cluck’ of the chicks of my grandmother’s garden I think, would make more sense than the chant of the children of the coop. It is better we raise our own brood of chicks even if they leave their droppings in our bed rooms, lay fewer eggs and sit on the roof in defiance.

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 CHINNARAJ JOSEPH