Confessions of a Couch Shikari: Zero-Mile Birding and the Art of Cookie Stealth

“I had spent many nights in the jungle looking for game, but this was the first time I had ever spent a night looking for a man-eater.” – Jim Corbett, Man-Eaters of Kumaon

I had picked up a gorgeous copy of Jim Corbett’s Man-Eaters of Kumaon some months ago—one of those timeless Aleph Classics with a lusciously deep-green cover and a tiger’s profile sketched in elegant restraint. I don’t see these kinds of covers anymore, so I decided to pick it up. It was actually quite a decent read. Corbett is a great raconteur. What he lacks in literary prowess, he makes up for in his detailed hunting descriptions.

A game hunter who isn’t a yarn spinner is just a murderer, isn’t he? His killings are mitigated by fireside stories.

Towards the end of his hunting career, JC decided to commit his escapades to posterity.

I, on the other hand, realized I am the precise opposite of Jim Corbett.

My favorite machan is my cozy, plush, cream-colored sofa. I lower myself into its depths whenever I get time, with my binoculars close at hand. I sip my tea, newspaper half-read, and wait for birds to show up at the strategically placed watering bowl that I’ve kept on my compound wall. If I am feeling adventurous, I move to a rattan chair about five feet away for a better vantage of any bird that I am stalking from the comforts of my home.

I suspect there’s a growing tribe of us in living rooms across the world. The more active young’uns make it as far as their balconies.

We are the couch ornithologists, stationary spotters. The Zero-mile birders. The Mycroft Holmes of Mynahs.

We sit. We observe. We drink tea. We write. We rinse. We repeat.

When angling and golf are dignified as “sports”, why can’t we couchers demand an equally ornamental status for our sedentary scientific pursuits? After all, the true art lies in the stillness – in how perfectly you blend into your sofa, and how slowly you can reach for a cookie, taking that chocolatey bite with millimetric precision without disturbing a flaky barbet.

Isn’t patience a virtue? It’s exactly what great anglers like Jeremy Wade practice – standing motionless in water until the ripples subside, slowing their heartbeat, entering a state of near-stasis until the fish finally strikes.

In one of my favorite Sherlock Holmes stories, “The Adventures of the Empty House”, Holmes adopts one of his most cautious and perilous stakeouts. The quarry is the formidable Colonel Sebastian Moran, a master Shikari of the Raj. Through a particularly circuitous route, Holmes and Watson enter a decrepit house opposite 221B Baker Street and then begin a nerve-shredding vigil. When they finally apprehend the colonel, Holmes seems relieved, displaying uncharacteristic relief that he succeeded in bagging the colonel, unwittingly exhibiting the same gloating glee of a successful game hunter.

“How many times have you not tethered a young kid under a tree, laid above it with your rifle and waited for your bait to bring out your tiger? This empty house is my tree and you are my tiger!”

The closest we come to invisibility is in stillness.

Back in my drawing room, the moneyplant with the giant leaves in the background, behind the water bowl, disappears; first into a gentle blur of green, and then completely. The swaying neem leaves become part of the world as if they were meant to be. The bowl gently dissolves into nothingness. After some time, the presence or absence of a bird matters less. All that is left is the couch’s gentle embrace. I become the couch.

“Stillness teaches more than movement.”