There is an emptiness in the mornings now, even though the sound of traffic fills the air, not the lives. Dhaka’s sky has become quieter than before. Strangely quiet without the rough cawing in the electric wires, rooftops, and rustling in the mango trees, even in the garbage bins. Yes, I am talking about our most familiar bird, the crows.
Our whole childhood, we saw crows while going to school till the evening when they were getting back to their house in the trees. But now, unbelievable silence is making us keep thinking, “Why do I miss the sound of something by which my morning started before?” The realisation hits when we notice it was the annoying but also sweet sound of the crows, we are missing every day. Something invisible in our lives is vanishing, as the ash-black creature is disappearing.
Any bigger changes will always come with the loss of something; in this case, we are losing crows from our cities. After realising they are being vanished from Dhaka, we definitely want to know what they are not being in here anymore. The reasons are quite obvious; we might have even thought about the main reasons- rapid urban development, fewer trees, rising temperature due to climate change.
Along with these, there are also more mobile towers causing more radiation, more harmful pesticides and poisons, etc, by which they are losing their lives easily. We, the humans, are creating a space where it is not only difficult for humans to live, but also for the birds and others. Cows are being more in a difficult position, where they cannot save themselves anymore. They do not understand the idea of ‘modern living’. With such ordinary living, they are silently leaving the poisonous space.
In our messy cities, crows were the symbol of intelligence and survival. They were the most low-maintenance birds with an intelligent mind by communicating warnings, remembering faces, and even mourning for their dead. Maybe one of the cleverest survivors' disappearances says that, this might be the lives the cities allow now, not the city that has been changed.
The irony is, we have made the cities cleaner than alive. They have been leaving, because we have left first. Our longer balconies, courtyards, small gardens, and bigger trees. We are losing more than just ‘a bird’.
Before, there was the noise and songs of birds, rustling in the trees, and the smell of nature in our parents and grandparents' times. But we are having the sound of traffic along with the smell of air fresheners. Cleaning the cities has cleaned the natural environment, where the habitat of crows cannot even survive.
This is not only about the crow I am talking about, but this all represents how concrete and modern we have made our life choices that even the lives of birds cannot be in the place of nature. So, the city's quietest warning is that the crows are leaving in silence.
We can start planting more trees than towers, rooftops for hosting nests, and so on. Along with keeping our cities clean, we need to keep in mind that they cannot be profoundly clean if there needs to be a loss of a whole community of any living being.
If we can create a comfortable place by proper shelter, food, and spaces, the echoes of the city will return as the city’s chatterboxes again. We will be finding a bit of ourselves as well, by their return. Because, all the natural belongings do not ask for so much, but a pleasant place to live in. In return, they give us much more peace and closeness to nature without wanting anything else.
*Tasmia Sistri is a final year student of Media Studies and Journalism at University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh.