It was early Sunday morning at Basava Farms Hostel, nestled within the lush embrace of the Art of Living International Centre in Kanakpura village. The kind of morning where the air feels like it’s done a meditation course itself—calm, crisp, and full of promise.

Inside our room, silence had just begun to wake up. Nirvan, my 5-year-old roommate for the weekend, was already up and squirming like a noodle in a pot. His father, meanwhile, sat cross-legged in deep meditation, his breath slower than WiFi during a storm. Out of sheer respect—and the sheer impossibility of keeping Nirvan quiet—we both tiptoed out onto the balcony.

And then it happened.

Nirvan pointed excitedly at a row of birds sitting on an electric wire stretched between two poles, just opposite our third-floor balcony.

"These birds are doing a meditation course!" he exclaimed, eyes twinkling like he'd discovered a universal truth.

I chuckled. “How do you know they’re doing a course, little master?”

He folded his hands behind his back like a mini monk giving a TED Talk and declared, “Because they are all sitting in a row, keeping silence, and looking in one direction. And look! Their teacher is on the other wire. She’s the only one talking!”

Sure enough, one slightly fatter bird was chirping away on a parallel wire, probably giving them instructions like, “Now gently focus on your breath. If you see a worm, let it go. It’s just a distraction.”

I burst into laughter. Five minutes of pure, unfiltered joy, with a tear escaping my eye—not from sadness, but from the rare delight of hearing something so simple yet so profound.

“Okay, Mr. Zen,” I asked, wiping my eye. “But why do birds need to learn meditation? What stress do they have?”

Nirvan didn’t miss a beat.

“They are kids like me. Stressed out by pressure from their mom and papa.”

The honesty. The timing. The accuracy. I nearly fell off the balcony.

I imagined a bird-parent meeting:

“Chirpy, why haven’t you started nest-building yet? You’re 3 weeks old!”

“Beta, did you apply for the Great Migration route or are you still loafing around the wire?”

“Do you know what the neighbour's hatchling is doing? Worm farming in Canada!”

We both stood there watching the birds. Nirvan, the child, speaking like a sage. Me, the adult, suddenly the student.

“Do you also feel stressed sometimes, Nirvan?” I asked, more out of curiosity than concern.

He looked at me and said, “Only when I have to sit still for more than one bhajan.”

Fair enough.

As the birds continued their ‘course’, with the “teacher” now possibly guiding them through a ‘feather-body scan’, I realized that the ashram wasn’t just full of yogis and seekers. It was full of tiny, untapped philosophers—like Nirvan—who remind us to stop, smile, and occasionally, look up at the electric wires.

Because wisdom sometimes comes not from the Vedas, but from a child watching birds meditate.

(Author: Sandeep Sabharwal, Co-Founder, Sajeevan)