Ihtisham Kabir

Many people exercise for fitness and good looks but I exercise to stay out of trouble.

The year was 1989. Right after I started working at Silicon Valley’s Sun Microsystems, I was at a dinner party. My friends were inquisitive about this high-flying company. I offered two observations: every other car in the parking lot was a Porsche, BMW or Mercedes; and every other (male) engineer had a ponytail.

Sometimes an ordinary event triggers an extraordinary flood of memory.

Birds do funny things sometimes.

When we look at a photograph, our eyes latch on the main subject and zero in. Only then do we understand the photograph and respond to it emotionally.

My most memorable encounter with a dove took place in Kalenga forest in Habiganj. After a long unproductive day I was about to exit the forest. Ahead on the trail was a small bridge. From nowhere a green Emerald Dove descended on the bridge and puttered around, perhaps ten feet from me. Here was a gorgeous bird, normally elusive, so close to my camera. In a minute or two it turned a dismal day into a joyful one.

In Madagascar, nine out of ten species of flora and fauna are endemic. That is, they are found in Madagascar and nowhere else. When looking through photographs from a trip in 2017, I am vividly reminded of this fact.

Night was falling when we left our hotel in a small town in northern Queensland. By the time we reached the forest inside the adjacent national park it was dark.

Lalbagh Kella in Old Dhaka is an unfinished but picturesque Moghul fort with surrounding gardens. It was started in 1678 by Prince Azam, son of Emperor Aurangzeb. After the prince was recalled to Delhi, construction continued under governor Shaista Khan. But Khan’s daughter Pori Bibi died suddenly, leaving him heartbroken. The half-done project, now deemed inauspicious, was abandoned.

I read a book about goshawks long before I saw one. A Northern Goshawk is the star of H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald. It is the riveting true story of the author training her newly acquired goshawk, and how her relationship with this wild bird of prey enabled her to cope with severe depression and emotional crisis following her father’s death.

I went to the U.S. on a scholarship as an undergraduate Physics major. After a semester, however, I was having trouble believing fundamental concepts of modern physics. So I changed my major to Electrical Engineering. Being strong in mathematics I jumped right in and earned decent grades. The switch did not cost me extra semesters. But troubles of conviction continued nagging me. I could not envision a career designing electric circuits.

The first bird that many remember from childhood might be an owl. In my case, there was a massive Krishnachura tree just behind our house.

Like a high-wire acrobat the tiny bird tiptoes forward on the thin horizontal hibiscus branch, step by step. The branch swings up and down with the bird’s weight but the grip of its claws remains firm. As it approaches the flower terminating the branch, its patience runs out. Abandoning the circus act, it jumps up, hovers for a split second in the air, propels itself forward and lands on the flower’s base. Opening its beak, it extends its needle-like tubular tongue and inserts it into the flower’s base.

Ten years ago, I wrote a Tangents column called “Grandmother’s Diet.” The idea was this: in this age of processed and factory manufactured food, how does one choose what’s best for health? The notion – originally presented by Michael Pollan - is to avoid items that your great-grandmother (or, in my case, my grandmothers) would not recognize as food.

It was hypnotic: a persistent tunk-tunk-tunk sound with a muted texture, like a blacksmith tapping a metal pot with a hammer, its rhythm precise as a metronome.

It is impossible to adequately describe the exhilaration upon spotting a Scarlet Minivet inside the forest. High up in the canopy, where you have to squint to discern between branches and leaves, a flash of bright red darts from leaf to leaf and branch to branch like a mirage. You squint harder, shaking your head, thinking you are imagining things. As if reading your mind it sits still for a second to convince you it is real. Then it takes off. You think it is gone but wait... freezing mid-flight it hovers to check under a leaf where it finds a juicy larva. And then it flies away for good, leaving you asking yourself, “What did I just see?”

Details of our tour of Mexico in 1991 had started fading from my memory. A hazy outline remained: after a few days in Mexico City my wife and I had flown to the provincial town of Oaxaca and explored nearby ruins. Next we had gone to Cancun to swim in the warm Caribbean waters. At the end we had flown back to California which was our home at the time.

I was disappointed when I saw my first munia some years ago.

Before the pandemic I travelled to many countries in search of birds and wildlife. During the dark days of the pandemic I found myself longing for those places.

Taking in a sharp breath and forgetting to exhale is a common reaction when watching a flying male Asian Paradise Flycatcher.