In colonial India, the British conceived the Indian enthusiasm of flying pigeons as a wasteful sport. Such colonial disregard for pigeon flying exists in present-day Pakistan, where millions of pigeon flyers are viewed as “useless” people who waste countless hours on their rooftops with their birds. Developing on Naiyer Masud’s famous short story “The Myna from Peacock Garden”, this essay challenges these assumptions and suggests that birds in colonial and postcolonial South Asia should not be seen as passive objects; rather, they emerge as active actors whose close association allow people to transform their self. The essay explicates the daily choices of pigeon flyers, their embodied affection and entangled attachment with pigeons, and their understanding of life to argue that anthropology’s attention to birds can allow us to explore often-overlooked possibilities of conceiving and altering the self in the presence of more-than-humans.

Key Questions

• What does this romance of flying pigeons mean for those who are castigated by society?

• Why is the seduction of keeping and raising pigeons essential to them when the economic benefits from this sporting practice fall woefully short of its expenses?