Peacocks.
They are all over our campus. But, being a very shy species, they seldom spend time being stationary within 1-2 meters of humans for more than a few seconds unless.. like other animals, they somehow develop a trust with our species. In most of my observed cases, offering food to the animals repetitively over some time does the job.
And so, you will be able to see some interesting sights in some of the campus canteens. This post is about my today's experience at the CC Canteen (CC - computer center), henceforth referred to as CCC in this post.
I visited CCC today evening ... ah... and now I can not stop myself from adding a few sentimental drops into this pudding.
I visited CCC today evening after a very long time, I had intended to write above. In fact, during the past two years of my stay I have been there only twice or thrice. And only out of necessity. You see, there's now a CCD (Cafe Coffee Day) outlet in our campus and ever since it opened I(1) stopped visiting CCC - a fact that I realized today evening while considering my options for having a decent cup of coffee served within 10 minutes while I was in the academic area. I knew that CCD would be brimming with people at that hour and with my French(2) class due to begin after 15 minutes from that moment of consideration, CCC seemed an ideal and, as I made my way for it, I felt, a very sweet and desirable one. During my B.Tech days and 1st year of PhD, I frequented it a lot, mostly around mid-night hour, while studying at one of these 3 locations - Library; CC ; CS lounge(3). Okay, enough of these reminiscences! Back to today's experience:
After making the payments I carried my cup of coffee and a sweet snack(4) outside and sat down on one of the fixed long red benches. No sooner had I started eating I saw a very inquisitive looking peacock approaching me. Soon I found it standing less than a meter away from my bench, with its head following the movements of my hand that was holding the plate containing the sweet snack and its gaze locked on to it. Then, its head started closing in on the plate.
Finding myself in this situation for the first time and out of some kind of instinctive fear of getting bitten by it's sharp beak (the close proximity reveals these details fully), I confess, my first thought was to scare the poor creature away and ward off any hopes that it might develop in being able to get some of my snack. And I attempted some gestures to that end but to my surprise the peacock hardly flinched. Then, with mixed feelings of sympathy, curiosity, amusement, and with the expectation that it would leave me to myself afterwards, I threw a small piece of the snack near its feet, which immediately got picked up by its beak and swallowed. But this act only encouraged it further! The end result was that about 50% of the snack got into its belly. In the process I was able to admire the beautiful colors and patterns on its body.
After the snack was no longer to be seen on my plate, its eyes searched me for other possible goodies. It probably thought that my cup of coffee contained them. But, after a few gestures of mine, it eventually understood that it was time to find another large-hearted human. Or perhaps, simply a human with some food - the method of coaxing him/her into its own way seemed something it had become adept at.
After finishing my coffee and feeling, strangely, in a good mood after the above proceedings, I thought them to be worthy of this blog post. Fortunately I was carrying my electronic tablet in my backpack and was able to take this short video clip before leaving in which the same peacock is trying its art with another human:
And here's a still image that I captured along with the above video:
1My guess is that it's true for majority of other students as well, though I
think those working in buildings close to CC canteen and senior faculty
have not given up on it.
2Oh, I have been attending French classes during the current academic year, the experiences of which might also find their way into some future post(s)!
3A coveted air-conditioned place located at the ground floor of the Computer Science dept. building with Wi-Fi access and opened 24X7 for all students.. though am not sure whether such privileges still exist.
4Don't know its name but it's like an elongated form of samosa but with delicious sugary contents.
2Oh, I have been attending French classes during the current academic year, the experiences of which might also find their way into some future post(s)!
3A coveted air-conditioned place located at the ground floor of the Computer Science dept. building with Wi-Fi access and opened 24X7 for all students.. though am not sure whether such privileges still exist.
4Don't know its name but it's like an elongated form of samosa but with delicious sugary contents.
