A peacock perched on a parapet at Mayurgram. Picture by Dipankar Chatterjee

Khandaghosh, Sept. 3: A village in Burdwan is now home to over a hundred peacocks, whose ancestors came from Uttar Pradesh a decade and a half ago.

Raja Munshi, a rich farmer, had brought a pair from a trip to the heartland, little realising he would change his village forever.

Munshi, now 78, is ailing, but Badulia, 120 km from Calcutta, is now Mayurgram.

The birds, flitting through courtyards or perched on electrical wires, have not only changed the way Badulia looked but also the way its other inhabitants looked at life.

Many farmers now use organic fertilisers out of fear that chemicals might harm their beautiful neighbours.

“A couple of years ago, their eggs would be stolen and even children would stone them for fun. But now we have realised these birds have added colour to our lives and made our village a rare place in the state. Now, we treat these birds as our assets,” said Mafuz Rahaman, a villager.

The villagers had sent a request to the Burdwan zilla pa-rishad to make sure that the national bird was protected. “Badulia is really a rare phenomenon. We want to protect the peacocks,” said Uday Sarkar, the parishad president.

District magistrate Subrata Gupta, too, has asked the forest department to draw up a programme to help preserve the peacock population.

In Bengal, peacocks were only found in Murshidabad, where the Nawabs had brought them in the 18th century.

At Mayurgram, they live an arm’s length away from, or sometimes closer to, human beings. The birds tiptoe into kitchens, coaxing housewives to offer food, and return for a meal the next day. “We have come to love them. We are so used to the birds now that we keep some food aside for them every day,” said Anamika Roy.

That the villagers had to also take care of the birds if they really loved them was conveyed by an NGO. “We alerted the villagers about the risk of the peacocks straying into the paddy fields where pesticides were used,” said Partha Pratim Konar of the Paschim Banga Bigyan Mancha.

The Badulia residents feel that the government should create a peacock sanctuary there. “We are not trained to look after them. A few days ago, two birds died of a disease unknown to us,” said Amit Konar.

The president of the Khandaghosh panchayat samiti, Anwara Begum, said Badulia could also be turned into a tourist attraction. “It should find a special place on the Bengal map,” she said.

With word spreading about the peacocks, villagers complained of thieves trying to trap the birds to sell them in the black market. One of them said: “We are trying to guard the village as much as possible, but that is not enough.”