On a winter morning in Pune’s Erandwane-Karve Nagar, I was startled awake by the piercing call of a cuckoo. It was my first morning at a friend’s place and the cuckoo’s calling rang out clearly in the silent neighbourhood. I was shocked.

In the Pune in which I grew up, one could hear the mornings well before the sun rose: women bustling to the public water taps to fill their steel and brass pots; the clattering of women washing utensils; women and men rushing to line up at the public toilets.

Over the years, there have been competing sounds: vehicles honking, vendors calling, water tankers rumbling in narrow lanes, the growl of idle engines, men revving their motorcycles and scooters to warm up the engines, school buses honking to alert parents and children, stray dogs barking.

But when I stepped into the balcony of my friend’s home, a cup of tea in hand, the street and adjoining park were silent. Coconut palms and mango trees rose above compound walls. Sunlight fell gently across tiled roofs and roof tops, shining into the kitchen through wall-size, eastern mesh-covered windows. It felt heavenly.

Then there was a shrieking in the skies with a flash of green: parrots, bright green, flying in...

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