The Red-Vented Bulbul

    The Peepal Tree and the Birds: Stories from an Urban Balcony

Story Five: The Red-Vented Bulbul

Two of them moved through the branches together, hopping from twig to twig—always watching, always calling to one another.

Small, dark, restless, with a tiny red flame beneath the tail.
The Peepal had often seen the pair feeding and protecting their chicks.

Some said the red vent was the mark of a mother’s devotion, left by long days of guarding her young through danger and sleepless nights.

The old tree had often admired the bird’s quiet bravery—pretending to be injured, fluttering helplessly along the ground to lure a predator away from its nest.

For so small a bird, it carried a remarkably gallant and tender heart.

The old tree remembered lines from an ancient Persian poem:

The bulbul’s lament rises from the rose garden;
It has fallen in love with the rose and cannot be silent.

The little bulbuls of the Peepal seemed less romantically poetic than **Hafez’s nightingale—but no less fiercely devoted.

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The Coppersmith Barbet

  The Peepal Tree and the Birds: Stories from an Urban Balcony

Story Four: Coppersmith Barbet

A steady metallic note echoed through the morning air—somewhere a ghost in the canopy was striking metal: a craftsman, a metalsmith, heard everywhere, seen nowhere.

The Peepal knew this colorful little bird. It had grown up hearing its stories. Some said the bird had once been a coppersmith so devoted to his craft that even death could not stop his hammer.

Others believed the faster the little hammer rang, the hotter the day would grow. Farmers even predicted the rains by their call.

Tuk… tuk… tuk…

The small green bird with a red forehead sat quietly among the leaves, patiently striking its invisible anvil.

The wise Peepal watched.

Some birds sang for the bliss of it.
This one seemed to sing with a message.

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The Asian Green Bee Eater

   The Peepal Tree and the Birds: Stories from an Urban Balcony

Story Three: The Asian Green Bee-eater

It flew into the branch like a swift arrow just released from a bow—Lord Vishnu’s Śārṅga, as some called the bee-eaters.

Restless, the little bird flitted around playfully.

Then it perched on the electric cable passing through the Peepal’s branches.

The old, wise tree admired the small ball of green with tiny buttoned eyes and a bandit mask, like a little spy on quiet watch. It was the cutest of the lot.

The tree often wondered who would have thought this little soul could be trapped in unpleasant folklore. They said the bird carried poison in its mouth—the reincarnation of gossipers, forever chasing trouble through the air.

Such unfairness for such innocence.

In another legend, from a distant land, the bird was said to be a symbol of a second life granted by the Greek god Apollo after a grave mistake.

But the little green bird knew nothing of these tales.

Unaware, it simply watched the sky, rose into the light, and returned again to its quiet perch—content in its own tiny world.

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The Purple Sunbird

  The Peepal Tree and the Birds: Stories from an Urban Balcony

Story Two: The Purple Sunbird

The Peepal tree woke to a beautiful song.
A thin, high note rose through the morning air, bright and clear like a distant soprano greeting the day.

The tree searched its branches but saw nothing.
The singer was tiny, hidden among its twisted twigs.
The note came again.
A branch stirred.
The first rays of morning touched the feathers of the little bird—mid-song, its beak open and throat lifted to the sky—and it shone like a small jewel against the bright summer light.
A solitary singer, immersed in its own world, the dawn resting gently upon it as it poured its song into the waking air.

The Peepal listened.
And it remembered the words of Rabindranath Tagore:

Birds do not sing because they have something to say;

They sing because they have songs.

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The Red Whiskered Bulbul

 The Peepal Tree and the Birds: Stories from an Urban Balcony

Story One: The Red Whiskered Bulbul

The Peepal tree stood tall in front of the balcony.

Its leaves had fallen for the season,

And its bare branches spread wide across the skyline.

People said the sacred fig was wise.

Some believed it whispered its knowledge

to the birds that came to feed on its fruits.

A red-whiskered bulbul perched on one of its solitary branches.

It was about to break into its morning raga—the four-note ginger-beer call—when the Peepal spoke,

grave and low,

“Whisky springs not here to stay.

Summer comes with a scorching ray.”

The bulbul tilted its crested head.

“Ah! But I love the summer,” it chirped.

“The hotter the sun, the better the day.”

One yellowing leaf of the Peepal fluttered in the early morning breeze.

“Hm,” the tree murmured.

The bulbul began its morning raga.

Clear notes bounced through the empty branches.

The Peepal listened.

The sun would be harsh this year.

The winds would be dry.

Yet the bird sang as if summer were a festival.

The old tree seemed to absorb the song as it spilled into the warm morning air.

Perhaps the bird was right.

Even in the harshest summer, someone must still sing.

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