The untold story of Payal: catharsis for the family

Pragnya Mishra is an M.Phil. in Anthropology from Utkal University. She also has a post graduation diploma in Rural Management from Xavier Insitute of Management (XIM), Bhubaneswar. Pragnya has four years' of work experinece both in  XIM and  Agricultural Finance Corporation. 

pragnya quit her job to raise her children. She writes occasionally. She has contributed three stories to our website www.inourdays.org . Two of her stories includinhg one in Hindi has been published in two books namely 'Kangan' and 'Dear Daughter'. 

Pragnya has also co-authored a spiritual book 'God always Say Yes'. the book has received much appreciation worldwide. 

It was in the late nineteen seventies. My father, Shri R.K. Mishra, was posted in Gunpur, Koraput. Gunpur is a municipality and one of the sub-divisional headquarters of Ryagada district of Odisha. The outskirts of Gunpur were completely covered by forest and hills. My memory is faint as I was a small kid then, yet to join school. My parents had two beautiful pet peacocks: Payal and Jhankar. The duo was probably rescued from the nearby dense jungle.

Jhankar was a peahen. Payal, though a male was named Payal because of two ghungroos that he wore on his legs. Payal used to walk majestically all over our huge front verandah with that chhum chhum sound. He was as affectionate as a human. We loved him too.

 

Due to dense jungle, Gunpur was home to a large variety of snakes. Daily, we used to witness hundreds of them roaming freely on our verandah. We had a big garden as well but it used to look like more of a jungle with trees bushes and shrubs all over the area, rather than a garden. I still remember, snakes jumping straight from the trees to our verandah. To be able watch snakes flying in your front yard is a rare sight indeed. Payal and Jhankar played games designed by themselves. Sometimes they would hide themselves in cupboards, sometimes in our prayer room. Thus, they were around our house all the time. That was the reason why the family adopted Payal and Jhankar. Also, it is widely believed that peacocks would not allow the snakes to live within their territory. Though we don't remember any of them chasing snakes but their sheer presence used to make us more comfortable. Payal was very fond of my father. Payal used to chase my father's jeep till he reached his office. Then Payal would wait on the rooftop till afternoon. It was a mesmerizing scene to watch him flying over the jeep.

 

Payal would also respond to his name. When called out called by name, he would walk over promptly and with ghungroo sound to make his presence felt. Both of them would sleep on the roof top even though they had a house of their own in the verandah itself. It was a big basket made of bamboo. My siblings and I were so much attached to them. After two years, my father was transferred to Bhubaneswar. As Bhubaneswar is a big town, it was not possible to keep the peacocks in the house. My father decided to send them to his native place, his own village, which was just 60 km away from Bhubaneswar. Payal and Jhankar travelled all the way to Bhubaneswar with us and then sent to our village. They were to be in the care of one of my uncles in the village. Two months passed and we assumed that they had settled in the new environment. One day out of the blue, Uncle informed us that Jhankar had been killed by some nearby villagers. They had mistaken her as a junglefowl. Payal was devastated after Jhankar’s death. He stopped eating and playing and within 15 days of Jhankar’s death Payal also died. It was not that they were our only pets. We kept cats, parrots and dogs as pets but they were all adopted by me, going against the wishes of my parents. My parents could not reconcile to the loss of the two peacocks. Their troubled psychology of not doing justice to Payal and Jhankar prevented them to adopt any more pets. My mother feels strongly that if one can’t take care of pets like the way one takes care of one’s own children then it’s better not to keep any animals or birds as pets. Four decades have gone by after this incident. Their story is being told and retold many times. But what we couldn't change is the end of this story. Story remained the same and so was the guilt. As saying goes that if something which is troubling then it should be released, as a sort of catharsis. This something has been troubling my mother for years. Unable to express her own guilt mixed emotions, she requested me to pen down the story and share it with the world. Though I am sure it wouldn’t make her less guilty but a confession can perhaps make her feel better. As I pen down the story of Payal and Jhankar I feel perhaps they could have been rescued on time. Perhaps my parents could have left them in Gunpur jungle itself. Perhaps they could have handed over them to the Nandankan zoo. So many perhaps but the end remains the same. I am sure they must have cried, missed their owners. They must have screamed in the last moments of their life to see us. But neither their voice could reach us nor we. They died just once but we have died a thousand times ever since with the guilt.