Photography connects him back to Nature

A darter showing what's in the lake!!!

The ten days long Dasara festive season keeps every body in a holiday mood while the businessmen work an extra hour to make the best of the day. But for people in certain service sector it wouldn’t make any difference. A tailor world over becomes busy during the festive season. But in Karnataka with all its hordes of festivals, this one puts even the mechanics and electrician to over work time. On one of the day when they revere the implement or tool that gives them life every piece of machinery is overhauled. Thoroughly polished and decked up for the day with flowers and adornments of every sort; from a cobbler’s needle to a huge rice mill, a tea kettle to a steal boiler. Well after the D’day of the festival every body enjoys the stand still of their machines which they are connected to 24/7. They share sweets, invite each other for lunch and run around in new attires meeting people.

Our friend Ramesh had come home from Shimoga. He had worked with the Education team of Mysore Amateur Naturalists (MAN) for about ten years. His job in the law department had kept him in the distant northern towns of Karnataka. To meet this special guest, Prabhu another old friend of MAN arrived. He stays right in Mysore but doesn’t have the time surface in the Nature related activities.

Mr. Prabhu M

Prabhu was a regular on most our Bird watching outings. His first appearance was as a response to our call for volunteers on the occasion of Waterfowl count in 1991. We had requested all enthusiasts to assemble at the Mysore Bus station to go for the lakes of Bannur sector. He waited for us at the Bannur bus station at the time we were to leave the Mysore bus station! It was no joke about his enthusiasm; he had set off on his 35 cc mini moped.

During college, his father had invested on a floor mill and Prabhu had to assist him in his job. The family matters ensnared his brilliance and innovative mind on to the rattling huller mill right from his teens. Exit college he had to continue the business. The machines had to run non-stop all through the year. His father felt the colony needed it and considered bad to put any body on wait. ‘People can’t go without food man, you shouldn’t deprive them’ he used to yell. We felt that we missed out a naturalist. Commitment to work and humble nature won the heart of customers. People started coming to his floor mill from far and wide.  He had to slog still harder to keep up his repute. Like many other ‘professionals’ he was not able to manage to keep his Sundays for his passion.

Purple Moorehen - in perfect home

I still remember those days of the nineties when his shop used to be a hub for all like minded people. Young poets to painters, civil contractors to soft ware engineers gathered each evening as the noisy machines came to the day’s rest. Birds and photography used to be a common topic. There was absolutely nothing to bar any topic from discussion. The discussion about the digital photography taking over the roll films is still fresh in my mind. Some of us had heavily invested on SLR roll cameras. Literature of all leading camera companies slyly kept the debate on not making it clear whether analog cameras would go obsolete. They kept analog cameras along with the digital version in the market.  Discussions about what is best would turn into heated debate calling for the stern intervention of Prabhu’s Father. When senses prevailed we got homebound to attend hunger pangs.

My kind of nesting material!

I was meeting him nearly a decade later, he has changed very little. The naughty smile never seems to be any aged. His parents were gone, and the brothers separated into their families. His only daughter has entered high school and is nurtured with activities related to nature through his descriptive narratives. He used to be such a good story teller and had the ability to bring back to life the entire natural history of the outing. This time he had a digital note book in his hand. He was shy about showing his recent works of the long kept hobby of photography. I was spell-bound looking at the hundreds of pictures of birds and animals narrating many things a naturalist would appreciate. Here are some of the pictures I could pinch from him.

The Pelican's scoop...

A spoon bill

Festival of colours at Heggadahalli Govt. High School

The beautiful campus

The Dasara holidays are one of the most engaging days for the kids in Mysore city. They have ample opportunities to get themselves keep busy. Every The state celebration at Mysore would offer a variety of options to indulge in. From adventure sports to music and literature, you have an activity for every budget. With distant cousins at home, visiting to the city to see the fair itself take away all the time. If you could bear the maddening crowd and manage the miseries of public transport or chocked traffics city strolling is free. There are a lot of things to buy and junk

food to eat on every possible street.

Santhosh and his happy children

Children in the surrounding are not deprived either. Over the years Dasara festivities have extended into neighboring taluks and districts even. Folk performances are held and mock Dasara procession is held to encourage the traditional art forms. For a couple of days these towns are involved in the festival without any fan fare. Small villages are beyond the reach of any of these developments. People there only see what happens at Dasara on their television sets. While Mysore, in the name of decking up for the State festival spend crores of rupees on masonry works of cosmetic order. The real brunt of Dasara is faced by the rural masses that have no role to play in this state run ‘tamasha’. All they see is one or two extra trips of the state run public transport which bears a board ‘Dasara special’ and charge an extra rupee or two! People in many such villages have never seen Dasara festival in their life; in fact many people in tribal hamlets of Heggada Devana Kote have not even seen their taluk head quarters that is just about ten Kilometers away.

Bird showcase

Heggadahalli is one such village ten kilometers from the temple town of Nanjangud. A drive through the beautiful country side on the recently tarmac ked road to Hullalli takes you through the lush green paddy fields. Just behind a nondescript village bus stop you see a Govt. High school with a vast play field adorned by a couple of large pepal tree. A small shrine of the medieval times is revered by the local community and invites a large number of deities who camp here for a night on their pilgrimage on foot to Mahadeshwara hills.

Making use of this beautiful setting is Santosh Gudiangadi the Drama teacher in the school. He has single handedly taken up a four days cultural workshop for children of the schools. His intention is to keep the children engaged in constructive activities during the vacation and expose them to art, theatre, literature and Nature. His perseverance with his head master and the parents had rewarded him overwhelmingly. This talented Ne Na Sam graduate has changed the complexion of the school through a theatre club named after Myna bird. There is a Javagal Srinath Sports club and an eco club which had their activities colorfully displayed on the walls of the classroom. His organizational skills and calligraphy has attracted children and the teachers alike. He sings and writes and mobilizes a monthly student magazine that has created an inclination for literature among children. The magazine reaches near by schools and the students are doubly proud of themselves. Some of the poetry has found space in the children’s columns of Prajavani a leading Kannada daily.

Santhosh Gudinangadi

Through this four days workshop he intends to bring in eminent persons in the field of science and literature to inspire his students. Dr. Anand V Patil, Asst. Director of All India Radio Mysore, veteran Science writer Nagesh Hegde , theatre person Mandya Ramesh, and Khanji artist Husaini  were part of the invitees. Spending the whole day with these cheerful kids gave me different insights into the tangential worlds people live in. Cultural events are being show cased upon gaudily decked up stages in every corner in Mysore, many of them with very poor turn out. The media manages to fix their view point only on what is happening on the stage. This village school Dasara to me shows hope, it promises to nurture future artists of this state.

Workshop to rejuvenate teachers

"wild " into the classroom!

October is a very tricky month for any environmental activities in the schools of Mysore region because of the State celebration of Dasara festivities.  The celebration of Wildlife week also gets morphed off by so many events during that fortnight. The school’s students would be drawn into Dasara sports or some other cultural activities and every institution would be busy in the selection processes at the taluk, district and state levels. Beyond these issues one have to find time amidst the mid-term exams and holidays.

Checking upon plant diversity of the campus

However, the management of Deepa Education and Service Trust managed to snatch three days for its teachers just before the Dasara vacation. A workshop that would refresh, invigorate and capacitate teachers was wished by the school and Hasiru Hejje team planed one with suitable resource persons. Mr. Subba Rao, the Secretary of the society lighted the traditional lamp to inaugurate the workshop. Mr. Manu who coordinated the workshop spoke on the occasion and promised to keep the three days cheerful and activity filled and thought provoking. He insisted that the school should start a Nature Club and keep it active through need based activities.  

Theatre workshop in progress

The three days were filled with a lot of hands on activities, energizers that the teachers could adapt into their class rooms. Ms. Geetha H spoke about the need for activity based learning on the first day and the benefits of Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation system. The teachers of the state board school took some patient revelation by the speaker to get these newer child friendly ideas. A teacher who taught fourth grade was persistently putting forward her methods of imposition writing and mugging up the tables. She was taught several games to teach tables rather than make the children write a lesson a dozen times. Mr. Ravi C explained, the children, in order to finish the task would simply restore to writing incomplete sentences in columns instead of writing a complete sentence. Their prime agenda would be to fill up the page and get away to play.

Teachers exercise to know their plants

The second day was dedicated for the development of creative abilities of the teachers. Paper and card sheets were used to make masks and models which could be used as teaching tools. Srinivasa S J used paper elephant to demonstrate the group behavior of an elephant herd. Jeevan Kumar, a well-known director in child theatre put the teachers in a lot of exercises pertaining to Body language and sense of rhythm. Being through the Swedish project for Children’s Theatre at Rangayana he had a lot in store for the class. Through games he made them open up with expressions and feel the ease in communication. The teachers felt the need of such activities for longer duration so that they could successfully adopt learning into class room teaching.   

A mask for the class

Mr. Manu in his sessions stressed upon why environment education is important to mankind and how mere considering it for class room teaching will not benefit the society. He mentioned the wrong model of western civilization is creating a consumerist world and developing countries are trying to ape the west. The development and economic growth of the western countries stands upon the siphoned resources from their colonial countries for over three centuries. And we couldn’t attain those standards as we don’t have that cheap labor and resources across our borders. As a result we are ruthlessly exploiting our own resources and people. In the valedictory session, the Scientist in-charge, Mr. B S Yogendra quoted the experiment of Pavlov about conditioning reflexes and enable learning. What is learnt could also be un-learned by removing the stimulating action.  With a pun he requested the teachers not to lose their enthusiasm they have gathered during the past three days. He insisted that the school should make use of the resources at the museum and enrich the young minds in their formative days.

Mr. Yogendra addressing 

Valedictory

The dynamic duo - Oliver and Ivo

 Ivo and Oliver

A lot of people are dedicated and committed to their work but only a few works benefit the world beyond ovation. If people with such credentials are gifted with the cool to face the bizarre environments and readily socialize with people across cultures irrespective of their officialdom, they would also possess the power to inspire a million other people. Over the past two years on most of my visit Hospet, I used to hear about two film makers from Germany who were shooting on Sloth bears. Whether it was a stint to conduct a workshop or to be part of a study team there used to be narratives about the adventures of the duo. Crawling into the rock crevices to place their camera to get rare footage, spending days together upon a rickety machan or crash landing from a of a hot air balloon upon a rock and so on. They were going to heights in order to film the unseen life of this so much familiar character in the Hindu mythology.

Atop Jog falls

Filming at Daroji

On a sunny afternoon in last summer we had huddled up a class of pre teachers for an audio visual session in the dormitory at the Daroji Sloth Bear Sanctuary.  As though out from the blue three figures squeezed into the dingy place. Every body was astonished to see these white men. The jubilant duo had tagged on to Tobby Sinclair a wildlife writer from Delhi. They had a good news- the film they were shooting here during the last season had bagged the prestigious Green Oscar award for the year 2013. Further they were here to shoot more footage on a larger format for the Disney.  They very humbly sat through our session and whole-heartedly accepted the modest of thanksgiving we offered. Further we sat through on a couple of occasion to learn more about their work.

In the cave waiting for " Bhaloo"

Oliver is a professional biologist through studies at the University of Hamburg.  His focus was Zoology, Geology, Hydrology, Morphology and Fish science.  Under the guidance of Prof. Harald Schliemann he prepared a thesis on "Morphological studies of specialized shoulder joints of selected Bats with special reference to connective tissue structures."

Ready for the shoot

Later he joined along with the cameraman, photographer and filmmaker Ivo Norenberg and founded a company called Gulo Film Productions in 2004 and started to make wildlife films. Their ‘Wolverines - Hyenas of the North’ fetched them the Newcomer Award at the 2006 BBC Wild screen Film Festival in October and a year later they  were nominated for the" Marion Zunz Newcomer Award "( Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival).  Since then they have consistently short listed for awards in every possible wildlife film festival. Some of their other works are Russia-In the kingdom of Tigers, Bears and volcanoes and Serengeti. The Real Jungle Book Bear filmed on Sloth Bears of Daroji for BBC Natural world and was narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

After a crash landing from hot air balloon!

The creative narrative of Oliver and the brilliant camera work of Ivo, especially his time lapse camera work have made their company a winning horse world over. They have collaborated or made films for so many agencies such as the NDR, BBC, Wild Horizons, Free Spirit Films, and WWF. GULO films have been co-produced by WDR, ARTE, ORF, Terra Mater, BBC, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, SVT, S4C, VOX, and ZDF.

At the teachers' training workshop