At the Zoo ------------- Rajan parked his motorcycle at the stand. As he swung his leg off the bike he glimpsed Chandani standing by the entrance. Her hair was pulled back to form a ponytail under her cap. Rajan secured his helmet firmly on the bike and straightened his hair with his hands, looking at the rear view mirror. He tucked his shirt and walked toward the rotating irn gates of the Central Zoo. He looked at her as he got closer. It was the first time he had actually seen her face to face. Her face was not elongated as he had imagined. Chandani had a rounder face and she was looking down at her feet. "Hello," he mumbled. She looked up and forced a smile. There were black spots underneath her eyes. She had the entrance tickets on her hands. They entered the zoo through the rotating gates. Rajan and his buddies used to frequent the zoo when they were kids. He was fond of the gates. They liked to swing on it till the attendant shouted them away. The clerk took the tickets, tore it in half and handed back the stubs to Chandani. She let them drop on the ground where there was a pile of spent ticket stubs. Right by the entrance were the bird cages. Tiny birds of many different colors; clamouring and chirping. So many small birds. Green parakeets and greener bee-eaters, yellow birds of names Rajan did not even bothered to look, colorful birds all chirping and jumping and dashing at once. And wrapped with the confusion of the noise came the peculiar smell. The visitors who looked like they were from the countryside looked at the birds with casual interest as if they had seen it all before. A mother was pulling at her child who looked determined to take one of the parrots home. Then more birds. Magpies and sparrows..."Why do they have sparrows in the zoo? They are common," Rajan said as if to himself. They walked on in silence. The noise of the birds faded as they walked away from the cages. Chandani had her head slightly slanted downward towards the ground. They found a bench near the antelopes and deer section. There was a throng of people gathered around a curious doe who had ventured away from the herd and towards the wall. A man lifted his son up in the air and said, "Can you see now? See that is a deer." The child looked amused but his sibling started crying and wanted to be lifted too. Rajan looked at the people herding near the doe and at the child crying to be lifted to see the deer behind the wall. "How many babies would you like to have?" he asked Chandani as they both sat down on the bench. She said nothing and sat herself delicately, not too close to Rajan. "I was kidding," Rajan laughed. The out-of-towners had continued on and the grounds was much quiter now that the child had stopped crying. There were some people paddling their boats on the pond across the grounds. Some kids were swinging on the swings. The sky was clear and the sun was just warm. (contd...) mG.