The Morning Visitor

“Knock, Knock.”

An intermittent sound woke me up from my slumber. I opened my eyes and glanced towards the digital clock, hanging on the wall, situated next to a white split AC. The light in the room was extremely dim, due to which the numbers on the clock were not clearly visible. I turned to my left, extending my hand towards the study table accompanying the lonely bed in the room. My hand was frantically searching for my go to clock but was only able to lay hands on couple of barely used remote controls.

I left the remotes on the table and searched for the most used device near my pillow. After a bit of hide and seek I was eventually able to locate my android phone, camouflaged as the dark cover matched the colour of the bedsheet. I moved the screen slightly away to avoid the glare suddenly hitting my eyes. I pressed the third button on the right and was greeted by the lock screen exhibiting a blue sky with specs of white clouds covering the mountain range situated near a river. In front of the sky, I noticed the pristine white clock, stating the time as five minutes past six in the morning.

“Knock, Knock.”

‘Is the doorbell not working?’ I thought turning around and lifting myself to sit upright with my feet touching the ground. I lazily put on slippers, gently rubbed both my eyes, and stood up to walk towards the main door.

“Who is it?” I shouted, with no response from the other side. I repeated myself and again called out, “Who is it?”

There was eerie a silence, the only bit of noise which too was barely audible was splashing sounds of someone’s vehicle being washed in the nearby building. Since I did not get any response from the other side of the door, I wandered back to my bed ready to deep dive into my slumber.

“Knock, Knock.”

I heard the sound and again shouted from under my blanket, “WHO IS IT?” without any reciprocal response from the other side. I got out of my bed, accompanied by a slight grim on my face and with a sense of seriousness in my walk, I reached the door. I walked slightly closer to the door, and with a bit of courage decided to have a look through the peep hole. We had installed a cyclops door viewer just a year ago, the shopkeeper had marketed the device as high tech since it provided a two-hundred-degree full view. I peeped through the hole and the only thing I could see was our neighbour’s main door.

“Knock, Knock.”

No one was standing outside the door when I again heard the noise. It wasn’t coming from outside the main door, but possibly from inside the house.

Another sound got suddenly added to the surrounding as a nearby street dog crying, “Woo hoo hoo hoo, woo hoo hoo hoo.”

“Huh!!” I exclaimed with my right hand placed on my chest and a drop of sweat trickling down, near my sideburn.

I slowly walked towards the washroom and gently opened the door to find it empty, not even an ant was roaming in there. I quickly bolted the door and started walking back towards my bed.

“Knock, Knock.”

“Knock, Knock.”

‘The sound was not coming from the main door nor was it coming from the washroom, where is it really coming from.’ The thought was eating away my mind, when unexpectedly there he was the little intruder right in front of my eyes, clearly visible in the morning twilight seated behind our black window sliding mosquito net.

We barely made eye contact, when he bent forward and using his straight and thin bill, knocked into the yellow bowl couple of times more.

“Knock, Knock.”

The medium sized, transparent, yellow bowl, kept on our window grill, was most times filled with water. Over time the place had been visited by a variety of avians, from sparrows, pigeons, parrots to crows. Today’s visitor was a young pigeon adorning a gray-black plumage with two black bars in his wings.

Unfortunately, the bowl was as dry as a bone and incidentally, our blue-grey headed friend was trying to get my attention, asking for water in his own unique way. For a second, I was in two minds, but I overcame my laziness, sprinted towards the kitchen, carefully extracted a medium size steel pan from underneath a mountain of utensils and filled it to the brim with water. I walked back slowly with the pan, to avoid any spillage of water and reached the wide and marble based black windowsill adjoining my bed.

As I climbed the platform and slid the window, our morning visitor flew away and stationed himself on the nearest cable wire, connecting from our building to another. I emptied the pan filling the bowl with water and closed the window.

I climbed down from the windowsill, went back into the kitchen, and placed the bowl near the washbasin. As I got into bed to complete my nap, I saw our visitor was back near the bowl, quenching his thirst.