Finding the Mountain
By Ean Pollock
I can’t recall when I first met my father’s friend, Ashok; I must have been too young to remember. Ashok Khosla lives in a quiet neighborhood in Palo Alto with his wife, Sue, and his daughter, Jocelyn. When I was younger, my family and I would go to parks and festivals with his family and him. Whenever we went anywhere close to nature, Ashok would find and identify birds just by their shape
from afar or the sounds that they make. I vividly remember his contagious laugh and charismatic smile that made him difficult to disagree with. Inside Ashok’s home, there is a wall covered entirely with framed photographs. Displayed are pictures of all of Ashok’s known ancestors, dating back many generations. In his backyard, Ashok preserves one of the last remaining American chest-
nut trees, regularly dropping sharp, prickly chestnuts from thirty feet above the ground. I feel a one brush by my hair. and roll off my shoulders. “That’s dangerous,” I point out. I asked him if one has ever fallen on his head, and he laughed and nodded as if he had been expecting that question. Ashok Khosla is a multicultural man of many important occupations and interesting talents. He is a busi-
nessman, an architect, a painter, and a sculptor. He speaks six languages. In 1995, Ashok hired a man by the name of Pierre Omidyar to work at Apple, who later became the founder of the online auction website eBay. From 1995 to 1997, Ashok worked with Apple to set up a software development center in India, offering career opportunities to the natives. He is a leader of the Bay Area Bird Photographers’ Association; In 2011, he was hired by University of Alaska Fairbanks as an adjunct pro-
enables and encourages others’ success. Today, he is the president of the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the conservation and universal education of nature. Just down Highway 2 from Fairbanks, Alaska, photography students from UAF venture into Tanana Valley State Forest with nothing but the clothes on their back and their photography setups. Leading is their professor, Ashok Khosla. The sun has only been up for about thirty
Ashok showing me his $20,000 photography set up. fessor of photography, so he goes to Alaska a few weeks every year to teach college students photography. He is a father, a husband, a teacher, and an avid learner. He strongly
minutes, and the morning fog is starting to clear up. After a long walk through the less traveled by paths of the forest, they arrive at a small, swampy lake in the center of the forest.
“This is when and where the birds come. People don’t bother them out here, and they need to drink water.” A rustling in the nearby trees attracts the attention of many cameras at once. This is what the photographers came here for. Less than a second after a king’s eider flies out of the trees, thousands of shutters are heard in a matter of seconds. A broad range of shutting tones sound at once in a disorganized symphony of tense, focused interest. The cameras are the orchestra. As the bird dives into the trees and out of sight, for a split second, you could hear the drop of a pin. When asked about his position as adjunct professor of photography at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, this is what Ashok told me: Every year, I go up to Alaska for 4-6 weeks...a lot of people come to me and say ‘how do I do bird photography,’ ‘cause bird photography is a pretty specialized skill. And another thing is because of my background in computer graphics...I know a lot about the underside of Photoshop. And so I bring that expertise. So it’s not only that I’m do-
One of the aforementioned prickly chestnuts from Ashok’s endangered chestnut tree. ing the birds with the cameras and lenses used for this attention to the northwest. camera, but obvious- type of photography can take “This species has been enly, I use photoshop over ten photos per second. dangered for a long time incredible that After a debriefing, the now–it’s better than the aver- encountered it.” age bear...So when I students walk in pairs around we’ve go up to Alaska I end the ungroomed area of the The students again form a up teaching bird pho- forest surrounding the lake, tense, focused audience, shorttography in nature, capturing as many moments ly accompanied by the broad photography and as their memory cards can array of shutter sounds out of Photoshop, at the hold before eventually head- time but in a strangely perfect University of Alaska. ing back towards the highway. harmony. As the students conA few minutes into tinue on their way home in Catching birds on pho- to in the middle of flight is the hike back, Ashok notices awe of this miraculous appearpart of what makes bird pho- some movement in the pe- ance, Ashok wishes to himtography so complex. Within riphery of his vision. It takes self that he could have helped milliseconds, the photogra- him moments to identify this species to flourish in its pher must be able to adjust this rare spectacle of nature. less than ideal surroundings. “Eskimo Curlew at four Born in Edinborough, the zoom properly, aim in the right direction, tweak the fo- o’clock!” he softly exclaims Scotland, Ashok lived quicus accordingly, and keep the with a sense of quiet cau- etly with his parents for the camera still. The expensive tion. The group shifts their first few months of his life.
His parents shipped him to go live with his grandparents in East Africa because they didn’t have enough time to look after him. He lived in Rowanza, Tanzania, and Lebosse and Nairobi in Kenya. By the time Ashok was six years old, he spoke six languages fluently: Swahili, Punjabi, English, Hindi, and two native African languages. After Kenyans began to get violent in combatting British colonizers, Ashok’s parents got a job offer as country doctors in Canada. Ashok moved in with them and spent a few years of his childhood growing up on the Canadian prairie. “ So I grew up on the prairie after having grown up in the jungle which was a very different experience–a very solitary experience.” When Ashok was twelve years old, he and his parents moved to the Bay Area, where they have remained since then. After two years of attending UC Davis and studying computer science, Ashok was coaxed by his parents to study architecture at California Polytechnic State University. In 1986, Ashok began working for Claris, where he met my father, Steven Pollock. After a few other miscellaneous jobs, in 1995, Ashok collaborated with Apple to create a software develop-
Like any nature lover, Ashok keeps a garden in his backyard. ment center in India for in- and to foster public awaredividuals with little access to ness of native birds and their technology who wanted to ecosystems, mainly in Santa work as developers. This pro- Clara County.” As president of gram, which is document- the of this society, Ashok has ed at cityofboiledbeans.com, many responsibilities to fulfill. Dealing primarily with was a resounding success and brought many Indian soft- habitat laws, the SCVAS, a ware developers up to speed. nonprofit organization, is In 2000, Ashok and my pit against big businesses in father co-founded Tuvox, a a legal war of great imporsoftware development com- tance. They work to maintain pany that lasted until 2009. In the current states of habitats 2011, Ashok became both an for birds. In the board meetadjunct professor of photogra- ings in which they discuss phy at the University of Alas- habitat laws, the conversaka Fairbanks and the presi- tions can get quite heated. When asked about his dent of the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society. Today, he responsibilities as president of lives a quiet life in Palo Alto the Santa Clara Valley Auduwith his wife and daughter. bon Society, Ashok responded, “Well, there’s the offi The Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society states on cial, and then there’s the untheir website: “Our Mission is official...you basically run the to preserve, to enjoy, to restore meetings of the board...the un-
This is Ashok’s family wall. It contains photographs of all known ancestors.
official is much larger...you’re trying to build a team of people who do various things... finessing and coaching, coaxing and pleading, and all the things that you need in order to make an organization work.” When I asked Ashok what he thinks lies ahead for him, this is what he told me: “I’m not sure. I’m retired, so I don’t really have career aspirations anymore. I want to do my art, I want to get better at my art.” Clearly, Ashok is oriented on furthering his hobbies and progressing in his personal ventures now that his time as a businessman is over. He spends a lot of time working on his painting, sculpting, pastels, carving, and photography.
I think it goes without saying that he will continue as president of the Audubon Society and a professor of photography for as long as he is able. When asked to describe Ashok in a few words, his wife said “Intellectually curious, restless, communicative, warm, generous, friendly, artistic.” When my father was asked the same question, he said “He’s a modern renaissance man. He’s an artist, he’s a naturalist, he’s a scientist...and he’s one of the most well read people I know. He just devours books on so many subjects. It’s amazing.” Some of Ashok’s wisest words to me came from something my father said to him.
Steve used to say that there were two kinds of people who were engineers. There was the kind where you could say ‘go conquer that mountain,’ and they’d find a path up the mountain, and then there were the ones where you would say ‘go build a road up that mountain,’ and they’d find that path that the other guy built and they’d turn it into a road. The guys who turned it into the road were big construction guys, orderly and methodical, every last detail is polished, while the guys who climbed up the mountain [first] were fast and clever and creative. I’m the guy who climbs up the mountain. I was always leading the wayout-there kinds of stuff.