A Caribbean cargo boat set out for Port Georgetown (PG) in October 2018, with over 200 excited Trinidadian passengers, who were released, early one morning, just off the rich Guyanese coastline.
Above the churning waters of the Atlantic Ocean, and under heavy gray skies, the tiny first-time visitors had to fend for themselves, a day into their rough sea voyage from Port-of-Spain (POS). No illegal migrants, the flock of eager racing pigeons, including the ace avian agent, ring numbered 0007, nicknamed James Bond, were participating in a special one-loft race sponsored by a leading fancier, Brendon Chow Lin-on.
All had been fed the finest Versele Laga-Belgian brand meal of some 20 grains and seeds, vaccinated and cleared for immediate take-off. Bond was favoured to win the grueling return to the Morvant loft in the twin-islands capital city, having made its name in the hard, competitive months of preparatory “hot spot” races that saw the best birds being trained to travel from distant southern points like Galeota, Moruga and Icacos. Bond’s owner, tour operator, Navin Kalpoo would tease his fellow fanciers by re-playing the famous theme from the James Bond movies, until “they were sick of hearing it.”
Describing the great race as “very tricky,” he explained “all the birds have to stay overnight in the crate from which they would be released, and everything is captured by video and then put up on the WhatsApp chat for the fanciers to see.” Owners came to the clubhouse to witness their birds being prepared for the long journey. “When I kissed my bird goodbye, and I told it ‘Good luck 007!” everybody start making fun of me because we were all then thinking James Bond is a male.” Subsequently, Bond stunned everyone, anew, when she turned out to be female.
At 6:30 the morning of the race, the birds were freed. The vessel’s Captain contacted the event’s host to confirm the dispatch, and the coordinates and time issued. All fanciers were invited to see the return of the birds scheduled at around midday. Kalpoo remembered that it was “overcast, with slight rain” and due to this, “we had a south wind” instead of the “normal north east Tradewind.”
“While waiting, we got a call that 007 is in Tobago, and we were like – ‘How could 007 be in Tobago, when 007 is supposed to be coming from Guyana’?” Kalpoo said. “That is when all the fanciers started putting one and two together and realised that 007 overflew Trinidad and ended up in Tobago.” Racers like Bond average a mile a minute.
“The birds were expected to fly, roughly, along a straight line about 200 miles from the South American coast to POS, which means that 007 just added to her miles,” he pointed out in an interview. “When we pulled the map up and traced the coastline back, 007 flew over 400 miles (409 to be exact), a national record, and an incredible journey, to reach that point, without any food or water and without stopping until then.”
An exhausted and thirsty James Bond managed to reach a fancier just before Signal Hill, touching down at 12:45 p.m., over six and half hours after leaving Guyana. She stopped having spotted his pigeons. “He saw the strange bird, whistled and threw corn and placed water on his trap board, but she was so tired, he just picked her up, and then he saw the number 007 and remembered the bird from all those theme songs that I played in our phone chats.” Kalpoo admitted he is amazed and lucky to have recovered the star. “The fancier was stunned to see 007, but he was a nice gentleman, and honest enough not to steal her, because in Trinidad and Tobago, many fanciers hide good pigeons.” Minutes later, birds began arriving in the Morvant compound, winning the top places, by hitting a pad that records time down to milliseconds. Scientists have confirmed that pigeons also navigate by listening to low frequency ‘infrasound’ generated by minute vibrations in the planet’s surface caused by waves and atmospheric phenomena. The cloudy weather that race day would have sent the pigeons off their flight path.
As she grew older, the birdmen perceived, from her smaller size and features, that Bond was female. “So, after all that fatigue and talk I give the boys, 007 never won the big race, she did not even return home. I think she was going so fast that she overflew a visual boundary and ended up in Tobago,” Kalpoo admitted. Her rescuer, with whom he has developed a lasting friendship, asked for “a young one” whenever Bond was bred. This year, he received his reward of a female, 006 fathered by a pedigree pigeon, another valuable gift bird. The other fledgling hatched by Bond, a male, also numbered 007, in honour of his celebrated mother is showing promise, topping two recent races, as Kalpoo contemplates another round of the James Bond theme. The one loft programme ended, and Bond went back to Kalpoo who bred her to fulfill the promise.
I met Kalpoo, following the unexpected visit, at my home, of an injured James Bond. “I missed her a week ago and I was scared, since this is my famous bird, the one I cherish the most” yet “I thought she is a tough bird, she is going to come back,” he said.
One of the most iconic film tunes, the Bond theme, was based on an abandoned musical centered on V.S Naipaul’s acclaimed novel, “A House for Mr. Biswas.” Composer, Monty Norman, pulled out the forgotten manuscript from a bottom drawer, when he was called on to do the score for the first film “Dr. No” in Ian Fleming’s spy thriller series. Norman had not read any of the Bond books, but he recalled that the discarded number which he “always liked,” “Good Sign, Bad Sign” featured traditional instruments since it was a parody of life in the Trinidadian landscape of Naipaul’s 1961 breakthrough novel.
The distinctive guitar rhythm in the signature soundtrack’s opening bars, “Dum di-di dum dum,” set the tone. “I wondered what would happen if I split the notes, and immediately…I realised that this was what I was looking for,” Norman said in a BBC interview, a few years ago. Bond’s “sexiness, his mystery, his ruthlessness, it’s all there in a few notes.”
While Norman’s royalty-rich creation set the tone for Bond, the producers brought in another English composer, the conductor John Barry to arrange the number and jazz it up, into the explosive orchestra masterpiece. Barry would go on to compose the soundtracks for 11 more hit movies. In recent years, the British Courts have ruled twice that the disputed theme was written by Norman, now 91, and he has won two libel actions against publishers, including the Sunday Times in 2001, for claiming that Barry, who died in 2011, penned the piece.
“Good Sign, Bad Sign” consists of a character singing about his magic sneeze. The lyrics include: “I was born with this unlucky sneeze. And what is worse I came into the world the wrong way round. Pundits all agree that I am the reason why my father fell into the village pond and drowned. I was born under a bad sign, All of Trini-dad said it was a bad sign. Hindus and Chinese, Africans and Portuguese, everybody worry about my sneeze.”
ID enjoys the “good signs” of the visiting James Bond and many birds, but hopes the islands’ outbreak of a widespread respiratory virus is not a “bad sign” that the constant sneezing is the feared swine flu.
