Tony Deyal column – As Lucky would have it

Jul 14, 2008 Features / Columnists, Tony Deyal column

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I know someone who carried around a rabbit’s foot for luck.  While the foot was lucky, the rest of the rabbit was not so lucky.

People have all kinds of symbols and superstitions about luck.  Cricketers are supposedly more superstitious than most people. 

Writing about his Indian team mates, Kris Srikkanth, known as the Indiana Jones of Indian Cricket for his explosive and exciting batting, wrote: “Similarly, most of the cricketers have their own spots in the various dressing rooms around the country and the world. The lucky chair or the seats have had as much to contribute to a cricketer’s career as his skills with the willow or the ball!

“I have known cricketers who have refused to shave in the midst of a good run. It was all in their beards, according to them. Never mind if their unshaven, unkempt looks did not win them too many admirers! And some others have worn the same pants for several matches together. Their fear being that washing them might end up washing their luck as well.” 

A score of “111” is a “Nelson” after the Hero of Trafalgar, Lord Nelson, because he had one eye, one arm and one testicle.  The members of the batting team who are in the pavilion are supposed to jump up and down until the team passes that score.

In the theatre, among actors, it is bad luck to wish anyone “Good luck”.  Instead, you have to say, “Break a leg.” The number “4” is considered bad luck in many Asian countries (tetraphobia) and the number “13” is also perceived as unlucky (triskaidekaphobia).  There is a story about a man who was with a lady in her room when there was a furious banging on the door.  The frightened lady said to the man, “That is my husband!  Jump out of the window quick before he catches us together.” 

The man replied, “But, woman, we are on the thirteenth floor!”  She chided, “What happen?  You superstitious?” When I was growing up, life was a delicate balance and deadly battle between phenomena that brought good luck and those that brought bad luck.  Almost every object or occurrence was imbued with one or the other quality – an owl hooting in the night, a dog “crying” on a leash, a boat passing without someone sitting in it, a funeral procession – all had some deeper significance in terms of a personal outcome, fortunate or unfortunate. 

In Feng Shui, the Chinese believe there are certain lucky creatures, including dragons, three-legged frogs, fu dogs (which look like lions), bats (the real thing, and not cricket bats), cranes (the bird, not the construction equipment), fish (like carp) and the magical, mythical Phoenix which rises from its ashes and Harry Potter.

What they left out were birds that drop from the sky.  Not bird droppings from the sky, although that has been known to happen as this verse demonstrates:

Little birdie in the sky,
Why you do that in my eye?
That’s okay, I won’t cry,
I’m just glad that cows don’t fly.

What happened to my wife and children was that a very little bird, not too long out of the egg, and unable to fly, fell from a tree in our yard to the sun-baked ground.  They were all very concerned, picked up the little bird and put him back in the nest.  He soon fell out and plummeted to the ground again.  This time the birdie’s response to the force of gravity elicited shrieks, tears and much concern among the children. 

Once more, they ran to his rescue and placed him back in the safety of his nest and the wings of his parents.  As soon as they left for the house, feeling a certain sense of self-satisfaction from the knowledge that their good deed for the day had been accomplished, the bird fell from the nest a third time and they all screamed and carried on believing the fall had killed him. 

Worse, as the bird lay on the ground, it was clear that his parents had rejected him because they thought he might have joined the enemy, or he smelled too human.  Whatever it was, he was now an orphan; and had he remained on the ground, the tarantulas that nest in little holes in the ground of almost every Antiguan yard would have enjoyed an early dinner, and it would have been bye, bye, birdie.

So he was taken indoors and became the sixth member of the family – daddy, mommy, Jasmine, Zubin, Crix (the dog) and now Birdie, except that a name had to be found for him.  His escape from certain death (forgetting for the moment that he had carelessly lost both parents) made him a fortunate feathered foundling, and so he became “Lucky”. 

He was housed in a shoe-box and huddled in the folds of a napkin.  Indranie ground up birdseed and mixed it with milk and other stuff, feeding Lucky by hand initially, and then with a little stick to which adhered his meals.  From close up, a bird opening its mouth wide to feed can be frightening if you consider that, at one time in their lives, birds were dinosaurs. 

Then the question came up, what next?  So he grows and starts flying, do you keep him in the house, put him in a cage (which we detest) or eventually send him back in the wild to fend for himself?  That question is yet to be answered. 

In the meantime, Lucky is a delight.  His food is milled on my coffee grinder, and he sits perched on the windowsill with ventures to the ceiling, coming down when hunger overcomes the heights of his ambition. 

As I think of him, I smile.  He is Lucky, but we are luckier still for the opportunity to enjoy him and revel in his voyages of discovery.  I suppose that the wind must be strong for the bird to fall; but even more important, and a lesson in parenting, is as Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote in “The Sage”, the shell must break for the bird to fly.

*Tony Deyal was last seen saying this palindrome, “You can cage a swallow, can’t you, but you can’t swallow a cage, can you?”  

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