Opening

A young flamingo chick struggles to keep up with its migrating flock across the harsh salt flats.
Left behind beneath an endless sky, it searches for meaning in a world that demands strength to survive.

[Source: https://www.tag24.de/nachrichten/netflix-unser-planet-streamingdienst-warnt-tierliebhaber-baby-flamingo-traenen-twitter-walross-schock-1032196]

Dear Reader

Last year, during an ecology class, we were watching an episode about migration patterns in nature from the documentary series Our Planet. There was a scene showing flamingos on their long seasonal journey — thousands of them walking across a vast white salt flat toward distant water.

Among them, I noticed one small flamingo chick struggling to keep up.

The narrator explained that during these long journeys, some chicks simply cannot walk far enough. The flock moves on, and a few are left behind.

The documentary soon moved on to the next scene, but my mind stayed there.

Why that one?

What happens after the camera leaves?

That question stayed with me for a long time. This story is my attempt to imagine the voice of that lone flamingo.

What follows may sound like the monologue of a flamingo. But I invite you to listen not just to his words but to the emotions behind them.

And who knows… perhaps, in some quiet way, we have all been that flamingo at least once.

I Loved the Sky, If Only for a Moment

Mother Nature!!!. You, who paint the sky with colourful pink wings and paint the earth with our vivid cries, why this quiet punishment? Why do you bind me in this cage of brine and burden?

You, who gave life in abundance, why also bring death?

Why did you make skies so vast and also placed the traps??

Why create lakes that vanish, feed us with algae only to wash it away with poison?

Why permit storms that scatter dreams and predators that haunt the night?

I, born from your dust, shaped by your salt, how cruel that you remain silent as I fall.

Why, I am the unfortunate flamingo who could not fit in your vast design?

They say nature favours the fittest. But what of those who do not fit? Whose wings cracks in the wind, whose legs bleed salt instead of running free? Am I the error in your perfect equation? A loose thread in your game of survival?

Was I a mistake, or an experiment left unfinished in your vast laboratory?

I am confused, as to why there is a fracture deep inside me. I never wanted my story to end like this. My wings though fragile also had a dream and a longing.

Still, why I was given breath if my wings were papers and legs candles. Why this cruel theater where I am the actor who collapses before the curtain rises and the director laughs at me?

*And yet… even now, at the edge of this fading, I remember……

I remember, the sacred presence of my parents, their hopes folding gently into my small body.

I remember, a dance not just for survival, but of love to sustain the existence itself.

I remember, flying not the flight you punished me with but the flight I dreamed on restless nights.

If I must be a whisper lost in the wind, then please, let me be one that speaks truth: that even broken wings once soared, and even my fallow dreams once burned bright.

Mother Nature, you are harsh, yes. But your beauty in your cruelty, the weight of life balanced precariously on edges like mine.

So I will face my fate to rest in this bitter salt. Let your world spin without me, but you should know this: YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS…….

I loved the sky deeply, if only for a moment.

I flew, if only in my dreams.

And in that, I am endless

I was born from the salt. The salt flats stretched around me, endless and sharp. Those first moments were of joy, play and a miracle. That morning light, soft and gentle, pink as my own downy feathers, a sunrise I could almost taste on my beak.

Every step I took was a fresh page in a blank book, my legs drew the masterpiece of uncertainty as if learning a new language written in water and salt. Each bubble on the water was a lesson learnt to survive.

[Source:- https://earthsky.org/earth/flamingos-lifeform-of-the-week/]

We were a flock, a tangled mess of fluff and awkward hope, tiny heretics on an altar of salt gifted by nature to select what it loved? We shuffled and stumbled, lost in a chaotic dance, each cry a raw, unpolished sound to life. The ground beneath us was unfamiliar and tingled as if alive, a vast kingdom of mirrors catching my reflection. In that shimmer, for a fleeting, foolish moment, I believed I belonged. That I was real. I was Wanted.

I am here now . “Am I seen??”. “Am I loved??”.

The world grew with abundant food. Enough feathers to preen , and a lot of friends to mimic. I breathed the joy of beginnings, intoxicated with the sense of possibility itself. The ambience echoed due to laughter of the young, and I, foolish thought I could live always.

But As joy rose within me , the salt was already writing its cruel fate. It came like frost on my legs, crystalizing with every step. The world that gave me life also gave me the debt , I hadn’t yet learned to count.

My story was written in this plane long before salt made my legs shiver. It started with two curious souls ,two characters, in this drama written by the Mother nature itself.

My eyes are closed, blurred now, like water on glass, and I see them: my father’s proud masculine, He walked through storms; he fought the salt that would swallow the weaker souls like me. When he looked up at the sky, it was with laughter in his eyes and confidence in his heart.

My mother, who is fierce but tender, sought him to fulfil her tempest of desire. She craved a partner who could spar with the salt and winds, who carried in his feathers the courage to face the bitterness of this world. So that the offspring would be better fit.

Together, they spun a dream from mud and water, weaving hope out of sharp edges and fierce love. Their dance was brutality and grace entwined. The salt was patient and merciless, losing no opportunity to claim its toll, but they held on.

And I was born their little miniature to the future, a flicker born of their yearning and sacrifice. Their triumph, their gamble, now etches in every trembling feather slipping from my failing wings.

I am faltering as the salt gnaws deeper. I cradle their hope in my weakening heart. I am part of a story far greater than my faltering flight, a story of desire and survival written before I was me.

“Mother Nature,”, “What sin did I commit that you let me stumble, while others rise like dawn? I was as good, as eager, as strong as any then why am I not chosen? Why did you choose my father, but not me? Why?”

Forgive me, Father, forgive me, Mother, I am not the child you dreamed of, the one who would dance the skies and cradle the future. I am the shadow cast in your bright dawn.

How did you survive, Father? How did you find joy in the winds when all I find is suffocation? How did you bear the weight of the salt and still live with joy?

I can’t walk.

My legs fail beneath me, salt crusting at the joints, every step heavier than the last. Father used to say we must walk for miles and miles each day to reach the safe shore.

But now—I see no one. No flock. No feathers brushing close for comfort. Only sky, too far, and salt, too near.

How did he do it?

How did you do it, Father?

How did you bear this same heat, this same salt that now hollows me from within?

How did you find joy in storms, when all I find is suffocation?

The one they called Father Flamingo.

Painted pink by the sinking sun, he walked with purpose through the flats. His errands through windstorms were of tales. When he looked up, it was not with fear, but with laughter.

Laughter that dared the sky to do its worst.

My eyes are closed now. The sun presses down like a judgment, and the salt has begun to creep into the chambers of my heart. My breath shortens. My legs no longer answer me.

And yet—

I see him.

Not as I see myself: fallen, half-formed, doubting.

I see him, as he was—strong, composed of stormlight and conviction.

He did not wear any crown .He did not need it though. His stature was royalty enough. When the winds tore across the flats, peeling feathers from the foolish, he stood tall, neck arched, feathers blazing pink in defiance.

He walked not with arrogance, but with certainty: as if the salt could not touch him.

Each year, he undertook the great pilgrimage.

When the rains ceased and the feeding lakes died . He rose with the flock pink thunder across the sky.

They left the breeding flats, these landscapes of salts and reddish mud, and crossed barren plains in search of waters that still shimmered with life.

Thousands of kilometers.

No maps. No guarantees.

Just the pull of instinct and sky.

He led without leading. Just being near him steadied the rhythm of others’ wings.

At last, they reached the feeding lakes, where the water bloomed green with algae, the food that turned their feathers vibrant with life.

He fed not just to survive, but to prepare. Because the journey would not end here. He would return. When the time came, he would rise again. Back. Always back.

To the same cruel land, where the air spoke of hope and later with heat.

Where new life would be etched again into mud towers and trembling shells.

It was not just migration, it was ritual. Tradition.

The journey scarred him, I know it must have. The salt burned his legs too.

The storms chased him too. But, he never faltered.

In the chaos of the colony, among thousands of restless cries, he also performed the sacred dance to be selected from her who had the spirit of clarity

And she chose him for his quiet strength, for the wild that lived in his eyes, for the way his wings covered the earth with assurance. So that the little tot could evolve to fight with the tactics of nature.

Their courtship was no fragile romance. It was a war of poetry and precision, bills raised, wings flared, synchronized salutes performed in silence before the sun. Each movement a vow, a defiance of extinction itself. In that ritual of mud and wind, they became one, and then the seed of life was sowed.

[Source:-https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-beautiful-pink-flamingos-phoenicopterus-roseus-mating-camargue-image68224665]

Together they built mound of mud, shaped by grit and instinct. A fragile tower rising from nothing. A proof of survival written in wet earth.

And there, in that precarious cone of hope, I was laid.

A single egg. Pale. Vulnerable. Precious.

They guarded me like a treasure. Took turns warming me, whispering stories I couldn’t yet hear. The wind tried to take me. The sun tried to crack me. But they stayed.

When I hatched, I remember, though memory may lie, a soft sound. Not the thunder of wings or the roar of storms, but a quiet hum. A breath. A welcome. His welcome.

He fed me with crop milk from his throat, his body making nourishment from nothing.He stood beside me as I joined our group, that chaotic assembly of awkward young trying to mimic the elders. And always, when I fell behind, He turned. He waited.

He never said the words. But I heard them, always:

“You will walk. You will rise. The journey is in your blood.”

But now, I lie beneath this same sky and I cannot walk. The migration has begun. The sky above is loud with pink wings. But I am still. I see him in my mind, rising, leading, returning. And me? I never left.

I am sorry, Father. I am sorry, Mother.

I am not the child you dreamed of—the one who would dance across the skies and cradle the future.

I am but a shadow, cast faint and fragile in your bright dawn.

Every step that once promised triumph became a trial. The salt, once my friend, now holds cruelly at my legs, each grain a sharp reminder of my failing strength. What’s the weight of the sun on my feathers, when inside me drags a gravity no one sees? A silent sinking, heavier than the world itself like my own bones are trying to fall up, but the sky won’t have me.

What sin did I stitch into my feathers that you let me falter?

Was I not strong enough to match your cruel calculus? Did I fail the unyielding test you wrote in this salt and sun?

Was my birth too frail, my wings too weak, my spirit too soft for your grand design?

You, who gave life in abundance with broad chest why also bring death in your lap?

Why create lakes that vanish, feed us with algae only to wash it away with poison?

Why permit storms that scatter dreams and predators that haunt the night?

I, born from your dust, shaped by your salt how cruel that you remain silent as I fall.

In this bitter end,

Only questions that echo endlessly:

Did you choose my father because he could fly higher? Or was I too flawed, too fragile among your wild children?

Why was I left behind in the dust, light fading against your shining dawn?

The salt, the sun, the endless sky……..they press me down like the weight of a thousand lost dreams.

My wings flutter weakly, no longer the proud sails of pink I dreamed they would be. The warmth of the earth beneath me calls, soft and final.

I remember the first light, the promise held in each step, the laughter of my kin, the tender gaze of my mother, the fierce joy of my father.

How cruel it is that those memories burn the brightest as my breath fades.

The wind sings a farewell, as my eyes sees the endless sky.

I am becoming the salt, the dust, the whisper in the wild.

And maybe—just maybe—….in……… that ………..fading, I will….. still find….. a way to f…l…y………………..