"Welcome to the prison where every prisoner is innocent" .. I was stunned by these words. Life's deeper lessons can be very hard to digest especially when they are so crisp.
Welcome to the prison where every prisoner is innocent!
For a moment I thought this was the worst welcome one could ever have. Luckily we were visitors ... visiting the place as a tourist attraction, without realizing that it could be something different.
We were at the Singapore Bird Paradise, Asia's largest bird park. Call it a paradise, park or a zoo, it was still a prison, for the birds. And for us, tourists, it was a Bird Paradise.
Indeed, truth, like diamond, has many faces!
It all started back last year when Smita and I realized that it was time to visit a place in the modern world during our vacation time. A place that people generally know, and generally visit as tourists. Last few years we have been visiting places like Jibhi, Shangarh, Ketty Valley, Kelshi, Awas, Ganeshgudi and every time we come back everyone is confused about where we have been, whether such a place exists, and if so why would someone bother to visit such a place that no one knows about.
Both Smita and I prefer places that are closer to nature and away from civilization, and each one of the above have been amazing in terms of the quality of the experiences that they had offered.
This time it was different. We wanted to experience one of the most modern cities in the world and Singapore was the obvious choice.
While navigating through all the available experiences, the visit to the Bird Paradise came out as the unanimous choice. Located within Mandai Wildlife Reserve, Bird Paradise spans 17 hectares and is home to 3,500 birds from 400 species, of which 24 per cent of the species are threatened. Bird Paradise welcomes guests into immersive and naturalistic mixed-species habitats in eight large walk-through aviaries that reflect different biomes of the world, from dense African rainforests, South American wetlands, Southeast Asian forests to Australian dry eucalypt landscape, and more.
The entrance was contactless with the usual QR scanning business, and while I was doing that, I heard this voice, the inner voice.
There is something about this inner voice that I kind of like and hate at the same time.
There are few things that are to be treasured. Inner voice, for sure, is at the top of the list, may be just behind true love. And that's why I like it.
But then why the inner voice has to be so harsh? Prison? I mean why?
My bonding with the inner voice has been a longer one. Whenever it surfaces out, even though it does surface out rarely, it turns out to be a learning experience. It was going to be great day in that sense. With that thought I smiled. The gatekeeper at the entrance smiled in return.
Aha! the secret of the smile on the face was not revealed. The gatekeeper had taken the smile on my face as a welcoming gesture and had returned it back. Seriously, if AI can detect why someone is smiling, half of the misunderstandings in life may just go away. That is a food for thought for my start-up driven friends.
As we entered the first aviary, Heart of Africa, there was sudden silence, a feeling of being teleported to Africa. We saw a wide range of African birds in a African forest.
As we entered the paradise, the world was very different.
