Biplab Hazra

The year was 2000. I was then a little above 20. I started roaming about the forest ranges with my Nikon camera in and around my small town Bishnupur (once called ‘Bon Bishnupur’) to fulfill my long-cherished dream to become a wildlife photographer that haunted me from my early childhood. But the escalating human-animal conflict in the area frequented by herds of migratory elephants from neighboring states including Jharkhand and Orissa moved me so much that I could not help captivating those poignant moments in my camera. My heart was overwhelmed with grief witnessing unspeakable tortures perpetrated by the villagers on the herds of migratory pachyderms for eating up the cash crops like paddy, sugarcane and potatoes grown by the farmers round the year. The villagers desperate of protecting their crops chased the elephants hurling fire balls made of jute sacks and soaked in kerosene and burnt mobile and poking the elephants with pointed lance-like brick-red hot steel rods. Unwittingly, all these tortuous sights out of the struggles for existence between men and elephants anguished my conscience so much and my mere pastime of wildlife photography transformed me into an ardent wildlife conservationist in spirit. From then on my journey as a wildlife photographer cum conservationist continued unabated. My love for wildlife hauled me to Jim Corbett National Park, a forested wildlife sanctuary in Uttarakhand, Kaziranga National Park in Assam, Tadoba Andhari National Park in Chandrapur district in Maharashtra and vast ranges of forest land in Orissa, Jharkhand and others. Above all, I was given the golden opportunity by the Karnataka Govt of an African safari in Maasai Mara National Reserve, an area of preserved Savannah wilderness in South-Western Kenya, along the Tanzanian border. I became a wildlife photographer of international repute after I was declared the Sanctuary Wildlife Photographer of Year 2017 for my chef-d’ oeuvre captioned “Hell is Here”,