The tigress and her four cubs knew they were being watched. But their instinct told them that the man was no threat, and they went about their business as usual. It was an ordinary day in the animals’ lives, but an extraordinary one for Saravanakumar, who sat a few metres from the family. Deep within the forests of Tadoba in Maharashtra, he sat observing the tigress’ family have a rollicking time by a water hole. He recorded the precious moments on his camera — they formed the climax of the show Secrets of Wild India on the National Geographic channel.
The Chennai-based wildlife filmmaker has taken India’s wildlife to the rest of the world — he has travelled with his camera into our wilderness as part of wildlife documentaries for the BBC and the National Geographic and his own productions. “No animal is happy to see you,” smiles Saravanakumar, seated in the tree-framed balcony of his studio in the city, with his spectacular photo of a lone hornbill on the wall for company. But how else do we get to see the other side of the world — where elephant matriarchs set the law of the land and tiger cubs learn to hunt?
Saravanakumar recently won an award at the National Science Foundation for his documentary Living With Elephants . The film tells the story of two men, who, as part of the Nature Conservation Foundation, an NGO, have brought about innovative methods to deal with the man-elephant conflict in Valparai. The documentary, shot over almost two months, talks about the SMS warning system and mobile-operated elephant alert indicators that scientists M. Ananda Kumar and Ganesh Raghunathan pioneered in the area to warn people of the presence of elephants.
Saravanakumar’s subjects include leopards, tigers, lions and elephants — he spends a good part of the year in the wild and has worked with big names such as Alphonse Roy and Romulus Whitaker.
All this is the outcome of a career he has carefully nurtured over several years. “It was a very long journey,” he observes. “There are no shortcuts in wildlife filmmaking. The learning curve is lengthy and you have to constantly update yourself since technology keeps changing.” Saravanakumar is among the lucky few who have made it to the international circuit. That too, from a country that “doesn’t have a market for documentaries.”
Saravanakumar started his journey as a wildlife photographer. “But I decided I’d rather be a filmmaker,” he says. His big break came on a monsoon day in 2008 when he was working on a film on the gharial in the Chambal. He was to film the hatching of gharial eggs in nests on an island in the river.
For eight uneventful days, Saravanakumar sat alone on the patch of land, waiting for Nature to work its magic. But on the ninth day, something unexpected happened. “There was a flash flood,” he recalls. Instead of filming the birth of new life, Saravanakumar ended up filming devastation. “I captured the landscape getting destroyed,” he explains. The footage played an important role in showing how vulnerable the gharial was to the forces of Nature.
Crucial to the success of a wildlife filmmaker is his/her ability to rough it out. “You have to be absolutely fit,” says Saravanakumar. He says he often has to lug equipment weighing up to 100 kg on his back as he rolls his camera and climb mountains without batting an eyelid. “The stakes are very high,” he says. “You can’t afford to make mistakes; you should be able to deliver.” Saravanakumar prides himself in his ability to read animal behaviour. For, in their terrain, one should know when to back off and when to bask in the comforting feeling that the animal has chosen to accept your presence.
Saravanakumar feels that “there is no learning ground” for those interested in wildlife filmmaking in India — which is why there are very few successful ones in our country. He hopes to change all that through his studio, Evanescence, that teaches youngsters the nuts and bolts of wildlife filmmaking.
He is also working on an online channel exclusively for Indian wildlife. The channel will feature films specifically with narratives in an Indian voice so that the audience can connect to the content.
The first thing Saravanakumar does when he comes back to the city from the jungles is “eat a nice meal in a restaurant and go to the movies.” But soon, he longs to get back. Why wouldn’t he, when he spends days and nights filming moments that he’s probably the first to witness on the planet?
