| Who is Sumit Sen and why does
he pursue birds?
I am a good Kolkata boy, born and brought up in a lazy atmosphere
reeking with revolutionary thoughts. My genes are all mixed
up. I have doses of DNA from celebrated artists and leading
thinkers. I guess the amalgam led me to choose birds as my
inspiration and nature photography helped me express myself.
Confusion often makes for unique nesting places! On a more
serious note, my family migrated to Kolkata from Dacca, Bangladesh
just before the partition of India. I can also trace at least
three generations of legal professionals in our family tree.
And now you are a Kolkatawallah good and proper?
Although I consider myself to be a Kolkatan, I have
spent a fair amount of time outside the city. Four years in
New York, a couple in Mumbai and many months travelling across
the length and breadth of the country. My dad worked in Kolkata
and reached a position of eminence with the then, Calcutta
Electric Supply Corporation (now CESC). More to the point,
he was a talented photographer and a keen naturalist. Which
further explains the source of
my inspiration.
And what does your family say about all this given
as how you are travelling most of the time?
They love me and they love what I do. My wife and I share
our love for nature with our two kids, a strapping lad of
18 and a beautiful 15-year-old daughter, currently swatting
for her 1st board exam.
And where did you study?
Calcutta. I went the predictable route… majoring in
economics from Calcutta University and then the Indian Institute
of Management, Calcutta.
There would be little natural history input there
I would wager.
There was no need for inputs. I was always deeply attached
to nature. My oldest nature books date back to 1960 and I
used to receive a new one on each birthday from my father
till he passed away. My Flowering Trees and Shrubs in
India by D. V. Cowen (1961) was acquired for the princely
sum of Rs. 22 and 30 paise ! – not that I took to trees
with its help, but that is another story.
Nature was virtually always in your blood.
You could say that. Corbett, Adamason, Gee, Prater and Whistler
were memorised well before the Pythagoras theorem. I sketched
too and kept notes. When you start down this path of seeking
knowledge from the wild, you never leave.
With one of the best visited websites on Indian birds,
and an image portfolio that is the envy of wildlife photographers,
might I ask what you really are – banker, or birder?
I think the simple answer is that at heart I am a nature lover.
I enjoyed banking and handled senior responsibility with a
degree of success – but banking never took away the
attachment to nature, though it certainly diluted the focus
and commitment for many years. As far as birding goes, it
is a part of the whole framework of the living world around
us. I am as curious about a praying mantis as I am about a
beautiful nuthatch. Given the complexity and breadth of life
around us, I consciously chose to focus on this part of the
animal kingdom. I will still watch a mantis stalking its prey
– though I would not go out looking for one. But to
answer your question, birder or banker, I would have to say
– birder.
Any favourites?
Not really. No bird ever failed to grab me and I cannot point
to one that ‘turned me into a birder’. I enjoy
observing House Crows as I might a Mountain Hawk Eagle’s
effortless flight. Lifeforms with which we share our world
always turned me on.
Where does the tiger fit into your scheme of things?
I am as passionate about the tiger in the Sundarbans
as I am about the sparrow chirping on my rooftop. The tiger
is just one species and my passion runs across 1,230 bird
species. It probably involved the same complexities for the
tiger and the 1,230 bird species to evolve and survive. To
me each is an independent function of an evolutionary miracle
worth understanding and unravelling.
The lure of megafauna usually blinds most people to
the joys of the relatively insignificant. Does this bother
you?
Part of the obsession with the tiger is, perhaps, due to our
own feelings of inferiority and inadequacy. Mankind is in
awe of the big and powerful or there would not be wrestling
channels on TV. From the perspective of science, the tiger
is just another threatened species – its fate is as
symbolic of our times as the fate of the Greater Adjutant
Stork, the difference being that one is a feared beautiful
predator and the other is a skeletal carrion eater. But as
a birder, I am delighted with all the hoopla surrounding the
tiger. The efforts to save the tiger have direct influence
on the protection of bird habitat – I am all for saving
the magnificent beast.
Sumit, you still have a clipped, business-like way
about you. Why did the banker in you lose out to the slush-and
mud-stomping naturalist?
There is a story here. I once had to choose a venue for my
bank’s annual conference. The usual destinations –
Mauritius, Goa and what have you allowed everyone to hit the
high spots in the evening and helped bring the team together.
I convinced my team that Ranthambhore was a magic place and
that spending long hours together in Nature’s lap would
really help knit the team. That visit in the late 90s changed
everything for me. I realised I had to plan for a life that
brought me closer to the things I loved most. That the organisation
I worked for changed the way it was doing business in India
at around the same time and was also supportive of my desire
to find new challenges for myself only helped smoothen the
difficult transition from banker to naturalist. In the end,
I figured that ulcers, four a.m. flights, 14-hour conference
calls and missed targets were hardly signs of a good life.
Let’s switch tracks. What led you to venture
into serious digital photography so much before the rest of
the herd?
I was an avid photographer till in the late ‘80s. When
I picked up the camera again in 2000, the technology had changed
to digital and I decided to join rather than fight. Initially,
all I wanted was to satisfactorily document birds, for which
a digital camera was infinitely more suitable.
Would you advise other wildlife photographers to go digital?
Any tips that might save them the angst?
It’s a complex, involved subject and probably deserves
more space that you would provide here! But the key issue
involved is the choice of equipment and the ability to post-process.
Presuming that someone with a film-based single (SLR) lens
reflex camera wants to consider changing sides, he or she
must opt for Digital SLR (DSLR) – regular digicams just
will not do the job. Post-process is almost half the digital
story. The ability to handle image-processing software, understanding
levels, curves, sharpening, colour space... all go towards
achieving better digital images. Apart from this, the same
rules apply if you want winning images. But digital is infinitely
more convenient.
You have just returned from Lava and this issue (Sanctuary
Vol. XXVI No. 3) carries a piece by Bikram Grewal and you
about this wonderful place. What is it about that place that
seems to draw you like a magnet?
Etched on the sides of the Algarah road is a line from Rabindranath
Tagore: “ Be still my heart, the great trees are praying”
– that really sums up my feelings about Lava. Lava is
not just the best place to watch great birds, it is a mystic,
ethereal place of enormous beauty. It is the sort of place
where you don’t mind not seeing a bird the whole day
– but it would be sacrilegious to suggest that possibility
for Lava!
And the Sundarbans? You and I both seem
to discover deep stirrings at the very mention of
the place.
Sundarbans is where man stopped. It is where Nature’s
writ runs and the story of Bonobibi and Dakshin Roy is
all about an agreement to keep a part of Sundarbans under
the control of man and the rest under the protection
of nature. Sundarbans is immense, foreboding and mysterious.
I think it makes both of us recognise our own insignificance,
which is probably why we are writing
The Sundarbans Inheritance together.
What is your take? Does the Sundarbans tiger actually hunt
and kill humans?
Are you asking if they are man-eaters? I believe
the Sundarbans tiger will treat any creature that ventures
into the swamps as fair game. Having said that, the image
of the man-eater painted by story tellers is of tigers that
purposefully go out in search of human prey. This is not the
case with the Sundarbans. Here, humans actually travel far
from their homes to enter the tiger’s abode, where,
in thick forest everything that moves and is edible will supplement
a diet that includes crabs and fish! These tigers evolved
differently from mainland tigers. There is nothing unnatural
about adding a new, edible lifeform in the process of this
evolution.
Any blood-thumping stories of your own you want to
share?
Well, I saw a tiger on foot in Simlipal when I was just nine.
I also saw a lost baby elephant in Betla struggling to escape
from a mud hole and saw it rescued and revived by its ‘aunts.’
The adrenaline was certainly coursing through me when I saw
a peregrine snatch a wader in mid-air in front of my eyes
and when I saw thousands, literally thousands of butterflies
mud-puddling in Buxa. All this before I was 10. The adventure
has just never stopped ever since my grandpa, a hunter, first
took me out on endless jungle and fishing trips.
And now, with years under the belt, what is it about
wildlife that rocks your boat?
Hard to say. Even a few hours on the outskirts of the city
is a rich experience for me. Etched in my mind is a sunset
elephant ride into Manas, with the mist rising over the river
and a herd of wild buffalo milling about and snorting, as
a tigress dragged the buffalo it had killed only moments earlier
on the river bank. It is the whole picture – not any
particular part.
Let’s end on Kolkatabirds: It’s a great
site and has to be a huge amount of work. It’s
clearly not commercial, so why? And how does it run?
Call it an indulgence, or a life’s mission. The site
is my way of sharing both the joy and the science of birding.
When I log on (together with almost 1,000 people who visit
the site daily) it gives me great satisfaction to know that
we are an identification resource for 950 species, provide
hotspot descriptions for over 30 birding sites, provide hard
information on bird-flu, and help to network birders from
across India. That it is ranked sixth out of the Super Top
100 birding sites only inspires me to reach for the number
one spot.
For more on birding, Sanctuary readers are urged
to log
on to www.kolkatabirds.com
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