MARGA

One morning the two white eggs had turned into two chicks. One light gray, one dark gray, one a little bigger than the other.They raised their head and looked at me. They were alive and alert, and helpless. Certainly at the total mercy of life.I remembered my first meeting with their parents. And all the times I had taken a look at their nest, making sure at the same time that no one had got entangled in the net. I had noticed that the two pigeons were agitated when I arrived and therefore I had got into the habit of giving them a signal, emitting my animal sound, so that they could get away without panicking and getting stuck. And I started giving them a handful of dal every day, to sanction our “friendship”. For a few days after the accident I hadn’t even opened the window, so as not

2014 I was at Goa airport. In the waiting room, two chairs away from me, sat a Indian couple, probably husband and wife, of a certain age; he definitely looked older than her. The woman wore an apple green sari with fuchsia pink flowers that made a beautiful, almost psychedelic contrast to her fair brown skin with a slightly coppery note. She was tall, beautiful, but not the usual elegant Indian city woman you meet in airports; she had more the energy of a village woman, with big feet and high cheekbones, and a certain cheerful majesty rather out of the ordinary. She got up to go to the bathroom and her glasses case fell off. “Madam” I told her “you lost something” . She gathered the case, thanking me with a smile that was the quintessence of a beautiful smile, and quietly went to the bathroom. I was writing