The Hindu : New Delhi News : Glimpses of some special residents of Delhi

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Saturday, Nov 24, 2007
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New Delhi

Glimpses of some special residents of Delhi

Parul Sharma

A photo exhibition capturing high-flying birds is on display till Sunday

A rare sight: A sparrow clicked in C.R. Park, Delhi by Partha Sarathi Sengupta

NEW DELHI: As residents of the Capital, they do not seem to have got their due. Having shot them through his lens all these years, senior photojournalist Partha Sarathi Sengupta is now paying a tribute to these winged beauties in the form of an exhibition and a coffee-table book.

The exhibition of photographs on birds titled “Some avian residents of Delhi” that was inaugurated on Friday has been mounted at Muktadhara Art Gallery. It will be on view up to this Sunday. Mr. Sengupta’s commemorative coffee-table book on summer birds, “Walking with the birds in Delhi”, was also released on Friday.

A prolific writer, Mr. Sengupta has freelanced for different newspapers, magazines and news agencies before he took voluntary retirement this year to devote himself fully to his “boyhood love”: nature studies.

The pictures put up at the exhibition and included in the book have been clicked by him as current documentation and status of residential birds in Delhi within a period of eight months from the last week of February 2007 to the first week of October 2007.

“Once upon a time Delhi was referred to as a paradise by Mughal emperor Shahjahan. The topography of the place and the weather not only guaranteed the flora but also assured a vibrant avian population. Blatant urbanisation and encroachment have made Delhi lose its avian population and guests,” says Mr. Sengupta.

“During my active career as a photojournalist for the past three decades, popular awareness was disarmingly absent. We are blissfully ignorant of the savage depredations of nature, its use and waste and the catastrophe that looms large on our planet,” he adds.

Mr. Sengupta belives that the “enormity” of the danger calls for much more than just government efforts.

“It is the commitment of the common people that must hold the key to a successful fight to save our environment. It is the common people that must be able to discover that the beauty of nature they admire is a conditionality of our physical existence on the earth. We do need nature as well as its other inhabitants for ecological balance,” he says.

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