Gay-Neck The Story of a pigeon

Gay Neck The Story of a Pigeon by Dhan Gopal Mukerji, was not at all what I expected when I started this book. After reading it now it surprised me on how good it is and the deep meaning behind the story.
The book is set in the mid teens of the twentieth century during the first world war. The book starts out in India with the birth of a special pigeon ( gay neck) who is taught and trained by his parents and a sixteen year old boy( I am assuming it is the author, I do not recall the book ever saying his name) in the ways of flying and being a carrier pigeon.
Gay neck runs into many enemies of the sky like owls, hawks, and eagles and must learn how to outfly them or be killed. There are many adventures that gay neck and the boy go through and the descriptions of nature and the surroundings are absolutely magnificent. You actually feel peaceful reading this book.
The book is told by the sixteen year old boy but it also has parts where he has the pigeon tell his own story using, "the grammar of fancy and the dictionary of imagination." In these stories gay neck tells of the experiences he has while exploring and the many attacks on him by other birds. He talks of how cruel the world can be and asks, "Why is there so muich killing and inflicting of pain by birds and beasts on one another? I don't think all of you men hurt each other. Do you? But birds and beasts do. All that makes me so sad."
Gay Neck learns that men do go to war and hurt each other and I think that is one of the points the author was trying to make in that we humans can act just like beasts.
Gay neck goes with Ghond, a friend of his keeper to serve in the war as a carrier piegon and deliver messages from the front lines of battle to the commander in chief. Gay neck and Ghond sail from India to France and they go on a scouting trip to find a German ammunition dump. They see much killing and firing of men against men that both the pigeon and Ghond both have fear in their hearts. They go to a monestary to get healed by the wise lamas and they eventually find peace with themselves and overcome fear, suspicion, and hate.
I really liked this book even as much as I told myself that I wouldn't. I would recommend that any child read this book.

Gay-Neck (aka Chitra the Pigeon)

Poor Gay-Neck. His name (and the book title) is rather unfortunate today, especially given the age of the kids that are most likely to read about him. Since my local library recently provided home access to the Oxford English Dictionary, I was able to learn that "gay" didn't become commonly associated with homosexuality until the 1940's; Dhan Gopal Mukerji wrote Gay-Neck: The Story of a Pigeon in 1927.

Mukerji obviously refers to the definition of gay that means: "bright or lively-looking, especially in colour; brilliant, showy" - on the second page of the story, he says:

"His name was Chitra-griva; Chitra meaning "painted in gay colours," and Griva, "neck" - in one phrase, pigeon Gay-Neck. Sometimes he was called "Iridescence-throated" (p. 16).

Although I don't think that Iridescense-Throated: The Story of a Pigeon is much of an improvement over Gay-Neck, I do think that American publishers could take a cue from their British counterparts, who've changed the title to Chitra: The Story of a Pigeon. It's exotic without being overly weird, and maybe then kids wouldn't be afraid to check it out of the school library. But perhaps the fact that Gay-Neck won the Newbery award - and is listed by this title in so many places in the U.S. - prevents us from changing it.

Anyway, Gay-Neck was an interesting book, quite different from what I expected from "The Story of a Pigeon." There was information about pigeons' lives, but I also learned about India in the early 1900's, and even a bit about World War I (from the perspective of a carrier pigeon).

As I was reading Gay-Neck, however, I felt a nagging sense of familiarity. Finally, "O beloved ones of Infinite Compassion" (p. 178), I realized that certain phrases and descriptions reminded me of the Rudyard Kipling stories that I read as a child - especially The Jungle Book and Kim. There are elephants, tigers, water buffalo, fierce hawks, wise hunters, and even wiser lamas who live in splendid lamaseries high in the Himalayas in both. It's all very colorful (no pun intended).

Some of my favorite parts are the rather poetic passages (or, as Mukerji says, "the grammar of fancy and the dictionary of imagination", [p. 74]), like this description of a night that Chitra, the narrator (Chitra's unnamed teenage handler), and the narrator's mentor, Ghond, spend tied to the branches of an enormous banyan tree (so they don't fall when they doze off):

The tiger had vanished from under our tree. The insects had resumed their song, which was again and again stilled for a few seconds as huge shapes fell from far-off trees with soft thuds. Those were leopards and panthers who had slept on the trees all day and were now leaping down to hunt at night.

When they had gone the frogs croaked, insects buzzed continually and owls hooted. Noise, like a diamond, opened its million facets. Sounds leaped at one's hearing like the dart of sunlight into unprotected eyes. A boar passed, cracking and breaking all before him. Soon the frogs stopped croaking, and way down on the floor of the jungle we heard the tall grass and other undergrowth rise like a haycock, then with a sigh fall back. That soft sinister sigh like the curling up of spindrift drew nearer and nearer, then....it slowly passed our tree. Oh, what a relief! It was a constrictor going to the water-hole. We stayed on our tree-top as still as its bark - Ghond was afraid that our breathing might betray our position to the terrible python (pp. 61-62).

One thing that I didn't particularly like about the story was that the different parts seemed so unconnected. First we learn about Gay-Neck's birth and training, his odyssey across India and his battles and his mate, and then bam! He's in Flanders with Ghond and the Indian Army, carrying messages for the Commander-in-Chief, "who looked like a ripe cherry and exuded a pleasant odour of soap....unlike most soldiers" (p. 141).

The black and white illustrations were beautiful and unexpectedly striking - though interestingly, few of the works featured pigeons. I Googled illustrator Boris Artzybasheff, and found quite a bit more information on him than on the author. Apparently Artzybasheff illustrated Gay-Neck quite early in his career, and went on to do hundreds of more well-known pieces of graphic art, including about 200 covers for Time magazine. Check out one of his two-page spreads from Gay-Neck here:


I also rather enjoyed the spiritual side of the Chitra's story, with the narrator's musings about the "inviolate sanctity" of the highest peaks and the many different animals' instinctive acknowledgement of dawn. The lamas do steal the show with their kindness and their meditations on courage:

"Here let it be inscribed in no equivocal language that almost all our troubles come from fear, worry, and hate. If any man catches one of the three, the other two are added unto it" (p. 128).

The ending was also quite satisfying, including some surprisingly modern reflections on animals in their natural habitats, and thoughts on the emotional ravages of war - personally, for Ghond and Gay-Neck, and for mankind in general, who are "so loaded with fear, hate, suspicion and malice that it will take a whole generation before a new set of people can be reared completely free from them" (p. 171-172).

How can I not recommend a book about a pigeon (a pigeon, of all things!) that ends with this paragraph (p. 191)?

"Whatever we think and feel will colour what we say or do. He who fears, even unconsciously, or has his least little dream tainted with hate, will inevitably, sooner or later, translate these two qualities into his action. Therefore, my brothers, live courage, breathe courage and give courage. Think and feel love so that you will be able to pour out of yourselves peace and serenity as naturally as a flower gives forth fragrance.

Peace be unto all!"

Gay-Neck: The Story of a Pigeon by Dhan Gopal Mukerji

If you're interested in carrier pigeons, or pet birds, or India, or birds used in war, this Newbery award book from 1928 might just fit the bill. Yes, it's somewhat dated in style and content. Yes, the first half of the book is a nature story reminiscent of Jean Craighead George's books such as The Other Side of the Mountain, and the second half changes focus and deals with themes of fear, war, and religion. Yes, the narration jumps back and forth from the boy who owns and trains the pigeon to Gay-Neck himself telling his own story by means of "the grammar of fancy and the dictionary of imagination." Yes, its audience would probably be limited, but I think there are some children and adults, especially nature lovers and bird lovers, who would really like this book.

Dhan Gopal Mukerji was born near Calcutta in 1890 and came to the United States at the age of nineteen. So, I'm fairly sure he gets the atmosphere of life for a boy in early twentieth century India. Mukerji wrote other nature stories, including Kari the Elephant and Hari the Jungle Lad. In Gay-Neck, Mukerji gives a lot of information about pigeons and about training pigeons, and he imparts that information by means of a fascinating story of the adventures of one particular pigeon, Gay-Neck or Chitra-griva.

The descriptions of the pigeons' defense against their enemies, eagles and hawks, and of their capacity to deliver messages even in the midst of battle are detailed enough to make the reader feel as if he could go out, purchase a pigeon, and begin training tomorrow. And it sounds like fun. As an adult and a non-animal lover, I'm sure it's not that simple, but don't be surprised if a child, after reading this book, wants his own bird to train and watch and admire.

Gay-neck is admirable. Even when he gives in to fear after a deadly encounter with a predatory hawk, and again after his war experiences, Gay-Neck is able to make a comeback. "Love for his mate and the change of place and climate healed him of fear, that most fell disease."

The story does take place in India, and it's filled with lamas and monks and Hindu or Buddhist prayer and meditation. If that's going to bother you or confuse your child, but you still want a book about training pigeons or about India, try something else. However, if you can appreciate the story as a picture of another place and another time, a vivid portrait of a boy and his pet bird, and a good imaginary tale of India and its culture and a childhood in the Indian countryside, you should enjoy this book

Gay-Neck would make a fun read aloud for children who haven't been spoiled by too much action in TV and movies. Gay-Neck has lots of action, war and predators and natural disasters, but the reader or listener must have an imagination to appreciate the story. Gay-Neck would be good to read during a science study of birds or ecosystems, or as we're doing, during a study of India and its culture. The boy in the story spends most of his time with his pigeons, caring for them and training them, and he learns a great deal about birds and about communication and about fear and courage. I can see a child making the raising of pigeons a cross-curricular project and learning more than just how to train birds, too.

Finally, I leave you with a sample of Mukerji's observations on nature, especially animal life:

I thought, "The buffalo that in nature looks healthy and silken, in a zoo is a mangy creature with matted mane and dirty skin. Can those who see buffalo in captivity ever conceive how beautiful they can be? What a pity that most young people instead of seeing one animal in nature--which is worth a hundred in any zoo--must derive their knowledge of God's creatures from their appearance in prisons! If we cannot perceive any right proportion of man's moral nature by looking at prisoners in a jail, how do we manage to think that we know all about an animal by gazing at him penned in a cage?"