Watching the Watcher

A crab ducks for cover on a Sonadia shoal.

As the speedboat bounces across the relatively calm waters on its way to the shoals of Sonadia Island in Cox’s Bazar, it’s easy to imagine it’s a chase scene in a James Bond film. The morning sun is glorious, the natural setting sublime and the pace only slows to negotiate narrower mangrove-lined channels. In a way it is a chase: a race against an incoming tide, a race to count foraging shorebirds before they head off to roost as waters rise.

Md Foysal. His job is his passion.

For most people a job is a means to secure a livelihood. For a select few, both lucky and unlucky, career is a passion. As he heads to the “office” primarily to count sparrow-sized spoon-billed sandpipers on the muddy flats and sandy edges of the Bay of Bengal, conservationist Md Foysal, 29, of South Keraniganj falls into the latter category.

“Science believes in proof,” he says, “We count to show that Bangladesh is an important wintering site for the sandpipers, possibly the most important.”

He looks the part: not only clothes but even his rucksack is camouflage patterned. The binoculars on a sturdy tripod are ready. He’s not even thinking of wasting time with a camera like a tourist.

It’s an international effort to protect the less than 400 “spoonies,” as they call them, which constitute the global population including juveniles. In the tundra of the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia’s Far East where spoon-billed sandpipers breed before their long flight south, Foysal’s Russian colleagues protect nests, hatch eggs and rear chicks.

Shellfish trails.

This year, Foysal has recorded up to 49 mature birds in the census at Sonadia and Sandwip, representing around 25% of the global number of adults. It’s suspected there are more.

Working for the Bangladesh Spoon-billed Sandpiper Conservation Project, from October to April he heads to the shoals at least once a month, squelching across muddy flat to plant binoculars, watch and tally. For Foysal, nothing could be better.

“Whenever I’m out in the natural world, I know that I love it.”

Md Foysal's office.

A warning to parents who see their children as bankers or doctors: this is what can happen to a child reared in a household of pets. 

His father had pigeons and a dog; his uncle had parrots, mongooses, pigeons and a dog; his sister kept a weaverbird.

A place to count spoon-billed sandpipers.

As a five-year-old Foysal bought a rose-necked parakeet. He called it Titu and taught it to say “Kaka.” Their garden also furnished him with an interest in plants.

“I used to collect unknown plants from the area, anything fascinating, and try to grow them,” he says. “I had turtles, snakes, lovebirds, budgerigars, dogs, rabbits and guinea pigs. Mum was against the hobby. She didn’t mind the plants but she thought the animals made the home dirty.”

When he got his snake Foysal’s mother said “It will bite you. You will die.” She took some convincing it was a non-venomous species.

Each pet and plant raised new questions for Foysal. He was curious why a hill mynah failed to mimic some words, why an orange seedling he had germinated from seed died in sandy soils. Bird colours, seeds, insectivorous diets… he wanted to know why.

Getting around by speedboat.

His older cousins laughed at him when he’d ask for nature books but they nonetheless complied and when he was in class 9 he recalls a whole night passed submerged in a book.

Watching the watchers, Md Foysal and Sakib Ahmed.

From college Foysal had more freedom to move about and he spotted some kind of raptor in a tal-palm close to home. After consulting his books he identified it as a red headed falcon and he was determined to see its red head.

“I convinced my father to give money for some basic binoculars,” he says, “but it’s not easy to see the red head of a falcon with cheap binoculars.” Yet he watched it hunting, hovering and scanning for prey. Then one day it dived after a sparrow and its red head came into clear view.

Having learnt that the red headed falcon was little studied, Foysal made a plan to study it. He kept red headed falcon notebooks for his satisfaction.

Mangroves colonising a shoal.

In 2001 the college student decided to call renowned birdwatcher and conservationist Enamul Haque of the Bangladesh Bird Club. Foysal saved money from tuition fees to make the call.

As reward for his efforts he was given a bird calendar and invited to attend his first bird club meeting. “People said bird watching was mad,” recalls Foysal, “I was so happy not to be alone. I made a lot of friends.”

Against the advice of ‘everyone’, including an esteemed professor of Dhaka University, Foysal chose zoology, later completing a Masters in Wildlife and Conservation. “People in Bangladesh are unaware of career possibilities in conservation; but I have the support of a passionate community. Better opportunities will come.”

By this time hopes at home that he would continue the family shipbreaking business, as the only son, were fading. “I’m from an Old Dhaka family,” says Foysal, “making money and settling down are assumed. My father is also a nature-lover. From my mother came the strongest objections.”

The sandpiper "road".

Meanwhile Foysal promised himself to write a paper for international publication on the red headed falcon. “I struggled with English,” he says, “and everybody, even my university professors, discouraged me.” Qualifications first, research later, his professors thought.

How many spoon-billed sandpipers?

After he wrote it he showed a birder friend who said, “If you submit this manuscript to the Oriental Bird Club,” which was the plan, “they’ll throw it in the bin.” Foysal was too disappointed!

Nonetheless Foysal persisted and one day after submitting it, Enamul Haque called him to say the Oriental Bird Club was fascinated with his paper, and with him. His research paper was published in 2010 and Foysal received honorary membership of the Club.

It was also in 2010 that Foysal got the chance to attend a sea turtle conference in Goa. It was the first time his family took notice. “They saw that my career had made a special opportunity for me,” he says.

Offshore. Tide coming in. Time to go.

In 2011, Masters complete, he joined Sayam U Chowdhury in the spoon-billed sandpiper project at a starting salary of 15,000 taka.

“What’s the benefit of a healthy environment?” he posits to explain his career, “Well, we need biodiversity for a healthy human environment. Destroying biodiversity makes us weaker.”

By way of example he mentions ‘gallus gallus,’ the red jungle fowl domesticated 8,000 years ago in India. “Chicken eggs are used to produce vaccines,” he says, “and as a protein source how valuable is the chicken! Without research we could not have accessed this benefit. If it had become extinct, what a loss it would’ve been!”

Last October, Foysal met his Russian colleagues in China. “The future of spoon-billed sandpipers depends entirely on humans.”

Sakib Ahmed and Md Foysal in the speedboat.

Apart from their unique spoon shaped bill and their impressive status as travellers, Foysal enjoys watching sandpipers for their fast, constant movement while foraging. “They’re very hyperactive and it’s like my motto: always be young and enjoy life!”

When asked about marriage he says, “I’ve never met a girl who is really fascinated by nature! If I met one who could live with my career, then okay.”

The tide rises fast in Sonadia. Suddenly after checking several sites it’s time to go. The dry land we walked across is now underwater and the speedboat is waiting just offshore.

When all is said and done.

This article is published in The Daily Star, 
here: Watching Sonadia's Bird Watcher

Counting.

Once Was a Bird Hunter

The sand and mud shoals of Sonadia in Cox's Bazar are ideal shore bird habitat.

Muslim Miah in his tailor shop.

Nowadays, 33-year-old Muslim Miah of Cox’s Bazar’s Moheshkhali earns his living as proprietor of a tailor shop in Ghotibanga Bazar of Kutubjom Union. When business is good the retired fisherman’s son earns 5 – 10,000 taka per month from his shop – a modest income but enough to keep the bachelor on his feet financially.

For Miah it’s a career change. He used to be a bird hunter.

The shoals of southern Moheshkhali and Sonadia are rich habitat for shorebirds. The area attracts numerous species including the nordmann’s greenshank and spoon-billed sandpiper, endangered migrant species from the Siberian Arctic that arrive each winter after a long journey south. Worldwide there remain as few as 1,000 mature individuals of the former species and 200 of the latter.

Prior to October 2011, Miah, together with more than 20 other hunters, would head for the shoals at low tide and set up expansive nets along the shoreline. The only other income generating activity they had was collecting wood from the forest.

“It was dirty, difficult work,” says Miah, who had the opportunity to study to class V.

A shoal near Sonadia and Moheshkhali Islands, Cox's Bazar.

The hunters would wait for shorebirds to entangle themselves as they landed, knowing the wild flapping of any caught bird would attract yet more.

Eurasian curlew, black-tailed godwit, common kingfisher, Indian pond heron and black-headed ibis: these species were common fare at Ghotibanga dining tables. “Shorebirds were a usual food item in the market,” says school teacher Morshedul Hoque, “We never thought about it.”

The northern shoveller, a common duck species, was particularly sought after for being tasty.

Mangroves growing on a shoal.

As a bird hunter Miah’s income was significantly higher than today. A single Eurasian curlew, locally known as ‘totlarku’ and considered to be “better than chicken” would fetch 150 taka in the market. By selling 7 – 10 birds per day Miah could make up to 1500 taka.

But in 2011 the Bangladesh Spoon-billed Sandpiper Conservation Project (BSCP) which was founded two years earlier with the goal of protecting the local habitat for spoon-billed sandpipers, signed conservation agreements with 25 identified active hunters including Miah.

Resources were provided for alternative livelihoods, with Miah receiving 12,000 taka to buy a sewing machine and cloth stock. Through loans he was able to reach the 70,000 taka needed to establish his shop.

Ghotibanga Bazar, Kutubjom Union, Moheshkhali.

A bird chart at Ghotibanga Primary School.

“Some of the hunters are now fishermen,” he says. Yet others took to watermelon cultivation, livestock rearing or grocery stores.

As important as providing alternate livelihoods, was to change the mentality of both hunters and the local community towards eating wild birds. This was attempted through ongoing awareness raising activities including lectures, film screenings, photographic displays, folk songs and staged drama events.

According to conservationist Mohammed Foysal, 29, of South Keraniganj, involved with the BSCP project since 2010, villagers were presented with two main conservation arguments. “One is the scientific argument,” he says, “about the value of healthy ecosystems while the other is philosophical, that all creatures have a right to exist.”

Muslim Miah with his friends in the bazar.

He believes the latter approach proved the more persuasive, as it was explained that if they continued to hunt there would come a day when there simply weren’t any spoon-billed sandpipers left in the world.

To date, awareness-raising efforts have met with some success. Miah is apologetic for his past profession. “We did it out of need,” he says.

Ironically Miah believes he has never seen a spoon-billed sandpiper, the signature species of local conservation efforts, since hunters focused on the lucrative larger species and paid little attention to a by-catch bird barely 16 centimetres in length.

The tailoring business has not proved easy for Miah. In a small market like Ghotibanga, cloth is often acquired after an order is placed and this year with the dual challenges of political shutdown and a low fish catch, which means for many customers a shortage of taka to spend on clothes, business has been particularly tough. Weeks have passed without Miah receiving a single order.

Nonetheless he attends his shop daily and believes in the future of his newfound, more eco-friendly profession. “Business will be good when the fish bite,” he says.

Afternoon on one of the shoals that used to be Muslim Miah's workplace - now a haven for birds.

This article is published in The Daily Star, here: Once was a Bird Hunter

A Carpenter's Journey

Carpenter Gobindra Chandra Halder can't sit or walk unaided, but he pursues his livelihood with enthusiasm.

It begins with an idea. There’s planning to be done: a sketch in pencil completes the start. It requires concentration. There’s never been a journey of substance when it’s been relentlessly easy to plot the best course. There are always obstacles. Always.

Some travellers rely on maps. Others chart their distances with compass or strategy; or alternatively follow an intuition-based path. Gobindra Chandra Halder, 55, has found in flowers, birds, trees and people the key to his way forward. He has enlisted into his service the curves, repetition and symmetry of regal design. For his is the journey of a carpenter – a carpenter with more than thirty years of experience.

 Gobindra  has made a name for himself as a carpenter.

“The throat is four fingers,” Gobindra says, explaining how he measures each body part to give his carved figures proportional accuracy. Everything is measured.

The sawing and sanding are his setting out. It’s after that he proceeds further, commencing the painstaking carving phase that will bring to each design its life, its third dimension. He inches onward, slowly, slowly – towards the destination of the finished piece. “With delicate work,” he says, “there is no time limit.”

From his two-room, mud floor home-and-studio in College Road of Rajapur in Jhalokati he’s made his name in handmade furniture manufacture. The medium he found for his each successive journey is wood and Gobindra is a respected artisan in it.

Things are never that easy. There’s never been a journey of substance that’s been free of challenges. Sometimes such roadblocks are relatively minor and easy to negotiate; at other times difficulties of the seemingly insurmountable type appear – enough to tempt any weary traveller into hanging up his hiking boots for good. It’s in the nature of a journey: problems can arise at any time, well into a long ago established voyage or, as in Gobindra’s case, right from the start. He had little choice but to face his situation. There was nothing for it but to persevere.

“He was good at school,” says his brother, high school teacher Kitish Chandra Halder, “but fate did not reward him.”

There came a night when Gobindra was about ten years old, when he dreamt that robbers were looting their household. Driven by fear the sleeping child climbed out of the window and fell from the first floor.

At work in his garden.

At first it seemed as though he had overcome his injuries – that his nightmare would be recorded as no more than an amusing anecdote among various childhood mishaps. But from age fifteen Gobindra started to lose power in his legs. The movement in his neck, back, arms and legs started to decrease: the delayed result of a possible spinal cord trauma he had sustained.

His family took him to Dhaka. But after visiting many hospitals not only were the doctors unable to offer much more than the hope his injury would right itself over time, they were unable even to name his affliction.

His parents took him to the pond for swimming, which a doctor had suggested. They even tried treatment by a local healer, a kabiraj. All that was forty years ago.

“Our family has suffered for a lifetime from concern over his injuries,” says Kitish Halder.

Gobindra proved courageous. In pain and with difficulty he completed his SSC examinations. But after that he found it impossible to continue his studies. Nor when the time arrived was he able to marry.

There’s been a gradual deterioration. Our carpenter requires a walking stick to move about. He cannot turn his head. He cannot bend. Mostly he lives in pain. He dines at either his sister’s or his brother’s house as he cannot cook a meal. But Gobindra has never stopped trying – his furniture is evidence of his determination.

From a young age he had demonstrated a talent for carpentry. It allowed him to develop his small business and manage a meagre livelihood, in the company of flowers, birds, trees and people, in the medium of wood. He can earn around 5,000 taka per month, but his work gives much more than that: a sense of purpose.

“I never had lessons in carpentry,” Gobindra says, proud of his achievements, “The designs come quite naturally as I start to draw.”

Gobindra with a bed head he has made.

He makes all kinds of furniture including sofas, showcases, wardrobes, beds, alna clothes racks and chairs. But for his condition it would be no problem to work in building construction as well, he says.

“Big items like almirahs and larger beds are difficult for me now,” he says.

Each piece takes time to complete. Gobindra is unable to sit in a chair and needs to take regular rest, lying down for greater hours than he is able to work. Nonetheless his customers are usually pleased with the results. “They often pay more than the agreed amount when they see a piece completed.”

He should really go to Dhaka. Due to the difficulties in finding suitable transport and more so the cost, it’s unlikely that he will. But it would be interesting to know what forty years of progress in medicine could do for him. He might find there are treatment options now. His affliction might at the very least find its name.

But this is not his complaint. “People don’t order the most intricate items anymore. They are too expensive.” He wishes there were more flowers, birds, trees and people for him to measure and bring to life.

Yet, when asked what sort of design he enjoys most, he says “It’s like football. The best enjoyment is not for the players but for those who are watching.”

And all around Rajapur people are watching. Many houses in the area feature his work. In each sofa, showcase, wardrobe and bed is an arduous journey of his, most often seen in an everyday and taken-for-granted way – a journey hoping to reach the twin destinations of functionality and beauty. Yet it’s never been easy for our carpenter who cannot bend.

Carpenter Gobindra Chandra Halder in his two room, mud floor studio and home.

Questions for a Lone Bird Called Das

"Perhaps I shall be a duck, some young lass's."

This article mainly relates to the poem "I Shall Return Once More" and its well-known Bengali poet Jibanananda Das (1899 - 1954).

To maternal Dhansiri’s banks did you return, as according to your plan? Are you there now in the guise of a wild bird, a white hawk or shalik or dawn crow? Or were you driven to move on by the bitter realisation that found you when you saw that river later? Your heart must’ve been struck! It’s not the river you knew, Jibanananda. Change does not stop, even for you.

Trees reflected in the Dhansiri.

As the locals tell it quite assertively, it wasn’t far from the broad Dhansiri’s riverbank, your maternal uncle’s house. Is that how you came to know her, as some say, to be stirred into noting her name? Did you feel her watery breezes as you once sat beside the pond in your uncle’s yard?

Did he feel river breezes while sitting beside his uncle's pond?

On the other hand locals attest to many things and there’s no authoritative information that you really made childhood visits to the village called Bamankathi in Jhalokati – your mother was indeed from Gaila in Barisal. There would seem to be no proof that a now empty Bamankathi yard once belonged to an uncle. It’s a history unverified.

You would understand that people like to make claim to a name like yours. You of all people would appreciate that poets sometimes like to record names like Dhansiri in representing greater things. Where is the truth, Jibanananda? Did you leave it somewhere for us to find?

The Dhansiri reflecting plants and reflecting Das.

Yet it’s nice for a moment to assume you knew at least Dhansiri. It’s no great distance from Barisal Town and maybe there really was a relative’s house in Bamankathi. There are surely details that from your life’s record got lost along the way – just as the memory of the haystack doesn’t stretch much beyond the harvest. It is interesting to ponder that you might’ve held Dhansiri close as a childhood memento...

And as for the river – old people speak of a twenty-or-fifty-times larger Dhansiri, if you want to know. They can still recall, if you ask, the setting off by ship from her banks for Barisal or Dhaka – ships which must’ve reached even Kolkata once. Did you ever see those steamers passing: how each ploughed deep rippling furrows into the river’s skin? Did it seem as if those tracks would last eternally, with all the strength in the engines that made them?

Das portrait by Narayan Chandra Biswas of Itna, Narail.

But of course a boat’s trail vanishes after minor moments and perhaps you wondered as the majestic Dhansiri and her cohort wind regained the upper hand. It would’ve seemed that nothing could stop her: certainly not any manmade contraption – and you had little affection for manmade contraptions.

Yet time happened.

Some say deltas are unfaithful creatures, Jibanananda, devoid of loyalty as to where rivers lie and in what measure of bounty their waters flow. From Dhansiri’s bank that uncle’s house is a way off now. Some call the name of Farakka to explain your Dhansiri reduced to an exaggerated stream, with barely the width between its banks for a steamer to pass. It’s not a suitable transport route anymore. Others may wonder at the longer effects of British river-tinkling, turn of the last century, at the not-so-distant Gabkhan Channel.

Equally it might be that dear Dhansiri simply mourned the loss of her poet friend after you fell beneath that Kolkata tram and left that earthly life. It can be the river in protest simply refused to carry on with the vigour that had been.

"I shall return to the banks of the Dhansiri, to this Bengal / Perhaps not as a man but in the guise of a white hawk or a shalik."

Or was it your entanglement with nature that became quite unmanageable? As the currents of your own, now large, River Jibanananda grew after your death so the Dhansiri might have rather instinctively regressed towards modesty as a means of maintaining a kind of balance. Perhaps we witness in its reduction a form of love, a self-sacrifice returned to you by one of Bengal’s rivers? Could it not be so?

Some say you were a loner. But the rivers were always with you, Jibanananda.

Some say Das was a loner, but the rivers were with him.

Yet if it was your thoughts of rediscovering her beauteous strength that drove you as a bird back to Dhansiri it must have hurt to comprehend that like your own bodily vitality Dhansiri’s would eventually wane.

And when you knew Dhansiri reduced, did you break down? Were you overwhelmed – afflicted by the pain of that Dhansiri destiny you witnessed? No, more likely you took your anguish into yourself and waited for introspection to take its course and push it out again eventually, in a new and vast language of bird flight, a secret carnival of altered syntax cartwheels in the air and altitude rising and dipping lines seemingly without connection. Did the other birds understand your aerial acrobatics then? One day they will.

The plot in Bamankathi they call the 'Das house.'

And if you stayed at Dhansiri, were you circling overhead as we crossed the farm fields, directed by farm hands to the empty yard they call the Das house? They had excitement in their voices – they wanted that place to be special. Did you feel nostalgia or were you laughing – they got it all wrong!

Have you seen the new plantation and the fence of sticks that marks the nearby property they call the Sen house; was it there and not actually in Natore that a young lady once caught your eye, the one you reframed and named for the world as Banalata? On the other hand Sen is a common name. Nobody can ultimately know the source of your inspiration.

Beyond the fence is the 'Sen house' in Bamankathi.

That whole Bamankathi neighbourhood is gone now – just empty plots. I suppose they might have followed you to Kolkata at the time of Partition. I suppose you would have known it before your death. Was it with a sense of sadness then, for what you knew to be gone, that you wrote of Dhansiri? Or was it but a name?

Whichever was the case, wherever you put the truth, the destiny of the river you noted, you cannot have known that.

Yet don’t dismay, still there is nature’s beauty in her. A lesser Dhansiri is given to reflection and village fishing frames. Crops grow along her banks and small dinghies are yet moored there. The newer Dhansiri would be a most welcome home for a duck belonging to some young lass, her crimson feet adorned with bells. You wouldn’t be the only duck to float amidst Dhansiri’s calmed memories, though the company of other ducks might not have impressed you. Are you a duck – one of them? Which one?

Some say deltas are unfaithful creatures. The Dhansiri is not as Das would've known it.

A final question, Jibanananda, a personal question: when that tram bell rang on Kolkata’s street in 1954 did you fall or was it an attempt at suicide, a desire for an early exit from a then barely appreciative world? There is speculation, you know. Of course it’s not decent to speak much of suicide – there’s too much culture in it – and you don’t need to answer. I just wanted to say, I wanted you to know that if it was suicide, I for one can understand it.

Fishing frame in the Dhansiri.

You broke all the rules of poetry in your life and you should’ve been rewarded for that – but the reward came late and perhaps it was, in the end, the rules that broke you? Perhaps that’s how it always ends when the world is not ready. You must know that by now.

Perhaps the Dhansiri reduced its flow from missing its poet friend?

The Dhansiri, Jhalokati.

The Dhansiri today is quiet.

This article is published in Star Magazine, here: Questions for a Lone Bird Called Das