Darshak Chavarkar makes a soft murmuring sound to an Alexandrine parakeet. Another parrot begins purring as Vijayshree plays a music video on her phone. “They love to dance,” the Maharashtrian couple tells us. Interestingly, it was music that aided Vijayshree in breaking the ice with a parrot that first visited her five years ago. “I had a parrot as a pet when I was a child, and I was too attached to it. I have never had a pet since. A few years ago, when I was looking out of the window, I sighted a similar Alexandrine bird sitting on a tree. I whistled and called out to him for four hours, but he wouldn’t budge. The next day, he returned to the same tree. Just then, a troupe of dhol tasha played music in our colony, and he began swaying to the tunes,” remembers Vijayshree. She knew only the pulsating beats of traditional drums could relieve the tension between them. “So I turned to YouTube and played non-stop music. He gazed at me, clicking its tongue. I knew then we were going to be friends.”

Today, about 500 parrots are fed by the Chavarkars every day. The couple, who has been researching on their new friends for a while now, believes that the flock comes from somewhere near Aarey or Sanjay Gandhi National Park. “Our house in Vile Parle is surrounded by large and luscious trees, which the birds like. So they fly here every morning around 6 and sit till 10 am. They again return at 4.30 pm and finally leave around 7 pm. This has been their routine for half a decade now. They are our family,” says Darshak, 50.