No Title
Nita Berry
TIYA: A PARROT'S JOURNEY HOME by Samarpan HarperCollins India, 2011, 174 pp., 150
November 2011, volume 35, No 11

Perky and precocious, Tiya the parrot lives in the great big banyan tree which is home to thousands of creatures—feathered bipeds, quadrupeds, centi, deci and millipedes. Tiya’s is a secure and comfortable existence amidst his many neighbours in a place where nothing changes but the seasons. Indeed, all is well with his world—till one day, when a voice suddenly shakes him out of his complacency… You are much more than what you think you are, and you can achieve much more than what you think you can.

The formless voice urges Tiya to fly away from the old familiar banyan, in search of the unknown… ‘There is much more to life than this tree…’

Tiya finds the words of the formless entity—Mr Voice as he calls him(who later says Tiya could call him Hans), too powerful to ignore, and so he flies away, from his friends and home ‘towards the unknown—through the unknown—in search of the unknown.’

What follows is a series of adventures or rather misadventures through the strangest lands, filling him with fears and doubts. Chased by a group of boisterous children in one land, the little parrot enters the beautiful land of the Fays but is soon scarred by their razor sharp fingertips. Tiya barely escapes the weird world of the Zarys only to have stranger encounters in newer lands.

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