Children’s fiction: There’s no ostrich here. But a visitor wants to see one. How will Ritu find it?

Ritu’s attempts at mimicking birdcalls had yielded strange reactions in the past.

“We heard awful, scary noises at daybreak!” a family had once complained to Manager Babu.

Manager Babu had twitched his nose, which curved sharply like the beak of an Indian grey hornbill, and twiddled his thick henna-dyed moustache that resembled a ripe mulberry, the hornbills’ favourite food.

“Is your guest house haunted?” another family had inquired.

Yet another guest swore their son had seen a witch shrieking, seated atop a mangrove branch outside the window, with teeth gleaming like a flashlight. “Like in the Happydent advertisement,” the petrified boy had added, hurriedly stuffing his clothes into his travel bag.

“You must have seen a monkey,” Manager Babu tried to pacify him. But the family vowed never to return.

Manager Babu had threatened Ma that she’d lose her job if the guest house got blacklisted for being haunted. He’d also told the Secret Songsters to allow Ritu back into their group only after she’d perfected her mimicry. And Ritu had been working hard on it. So when someone actually cheered her, she was delighted.

“Kaaaaaaw . . . kaaaaaaw!”

“Yeyyyyyyy!”

The sound came from the guest room nearest their shack. She dashed outside and rushed into Ank Ank, to see who her admirer was.

There was a boy wearing a pair of camouflage shorts, a camouflage T-shirt and a camouflage cap. He was bent over the wooden railing, pointing a woman in the direction of their shack.

“It came from there, Mashi!”

Ritu gulped.

“Mashi, when I told you,” the boy waggled his finger, “two days and nights on this island overgrown with mangrove forests, full of birds and animals, would be insane fun – I swear I had no idea I’d hear an ostrich!”

She’d sounded like an OSTRICH? Ritu was surprised to hear this.

“Mashi, we have to get a photo of the ostrich for my birding journal.” The boy’s small eyes grew wide, and his round cheeks, like rosogollas, got redder as he spoke at breakneck speed. “The whole world will post about my discovery!”

Surely, the grown-up, too, wouldn’t think wild ostriches inhabited Henry Island!

“Like the time the American wood duck spotted near our place created a flutter among birders?”

“Exactly, Mashi! After you wrote about it in your newspaper column, hundreds of people rushed there to get a glimpse.”

To Ritu’s absolute horror, Mashi dashed into the bedroom and returned with a DSLR camera.

Seriously? Ritu shook her head.

Just then, a female voice hollered from the adjacent guest bedroom.

“Koel!”

Ritu’s eyebrows arched. First, an ostrich. And now a KOEL!

“Anik’s coming with us to the beach for a family selfie at sunrise,” announced the voice. “Koel, you can go after the ostrich.”

Back home, Ritu narrated the whole scene to Ma. “Now I sound like an ostrich! That boy, Anik, wants to put my picture in his journal!”

Ma kept nodding, but Ritu could tell she wasn’t paying attention. She was in a hurry to go crab hunting for the guests’ dinner.

Everyone loved the crab curry Ma cooked. Manager Babu had asked her to make it this weekend because he wanted to suck up to the guests staying, who he said were important. Ma would earn extra if she supplied the crustaceans.

Ritu picked up her bamboo basket and followed Ma outside.

Excerpted with permission from Ostrich Girl, Lesley D Biswas, illustrated by Anupama Ajinkya Apte, Hole Books.