You could call Mrs Imaculada de Santos e Cabral pious. She has the unique ability to pray out loud and simultaneously register who entered the church, what the person was wearing, whether the person went to communion and if anything was put into the contribution box. This took great skill, especially when singing the high notes during the offertory. She also had an Indian ring neck parakeet called Jarret. At home of course, not in church.
The problem started when Jarret started spouting physics. Well a parrot is allowed to say parrot things such as “someone’s at the door”. But when Jarret started reciting the 1st law of thermodynamics, it started to worry Mrs Cabral. She had passed the fourth grade, so this was not something she could have taught him.
Fr Roque Delgado, the parish priest was consulted by the neighbours. He was a thin greying man with tiny eyes and a wide wet mouth. Dalmira was a hefty woman of 50 who perspired a lot and spoke every sentence with a clicking sound like ‘tchah’. She suggested that the bird should be given a purgative and questioned closely. Everyone ignored her.
Fr Roque was asked if he could say a prayer over the bird. He looked like he was going to cry as he was not trained for these situations.
The matter turned serious when Jarret started babbling about Cartesian co-ordinates, Gaussian distribution and dipole moment during afternoon siesta. The resident headmaster was called to listen to this edu babble and give his learned view. Jarett suddenly went ballistic and yelled ‘Eigen function, Eigen function’. The head master went pale and said ‘good Lord, he knows classical physics’. This is clearly a case of possession.
That night while the village slept, Joel Miranda studying for his final year MSc physics came as he always did to Immaculada’s balcao to study. He liked to sit there with the streetlight flooding the balcao and the quiet that helped him mug up classical physics.
He memorised by studying out loud like most kids do. Not necessarily understanding. Jarret hung there in his cage, covered with a black cloth listening intently to the constant, cyclic repetition. The bird absorbed Joel’s dull monotone reading the Schrödinger equation. Jarretthe parrot was ready to graduate.
The next night, Noella Gomes wandered over to Immaculada’ balcao to study German intransitive verbs. Jarret cocked his head, his eyes blinking with intelligence. “IchmöchteeineWalnuss” he shrieked. Fr Roque, already in bed, crossed himself and closed his eyes. All he wanted was to save souls and play jazz piano.
(The characters and situations here are entirely fictional and have no relationship to anyone living, dead or planning to be born.)
Cedric Serpes is Associate Professor at the Goa Institute of Management. He is mostly intransitive and mysterious.
