>His exhibitions were widely appreciated and his talk that followed these occasions were a photographer’s delight, wherein he spoke about his actual experience in taking those awe inspiring shots in the wild.
>As an erstwhile member of the Bombay Natural History Society, I was fortunate in attending many of his exhibitions and also had the privilege of meeting him personally.
M KRISHNAN
M. Krishnan was born in Tirunelveli, a town in Sothern India on 30 June 1912 and was the youngest of eight siblings. His family lived in Chennai (Mylapore), and in those days it was covered in shrub and teemed with bird life, jackals and blackbucks. Krishnan even had a pet mongoose. In 1927 Krishnan joined the Presidency College and graduated with a BA in 1931. He also took a keen interest in botany, taught by Professor P. F. Fyson. He accompanied Fyson on field trips to the Nilgiris and the Kodaikanal hills and also acquired water-color painting techniques from Professor Fyson's wife.
For a while he made a living by writing to small magazines and publishing some of his drawings and caricatures. In 1942 he was offered employment by the Maharaja of Sandur in Karnataka as Publicity officer and a political secretary to the Maharaja. He spent a lot of his time wandering in the wilderness, observing nature, tried grazing sheep, breeding pigeons to work in a pigeon postal system and writing. His essays on wildlife photography were published in The Illustrated Weekly of India in a series entitled Wildlife Photographers Diary. He also wrote in The Hindu by the pen-name of Z about various aspects of natural history. This column continued for 46 years, from 1950 to 18 February 1996, the day he died.
Krishnan was responsible for the declaration of VEDANTHANGAL as a bird sanctuary in Tamil Nadu. He was aware that he was different from most conservationists of his time – who were either European or were from the Indian aristocracy who were more interested in hunting for trophies, rather than conservation.
It’s interesting to note that in 1972, Krishnan foresaw the possibility that elephants could communicate using sounds that were inaudible to the human ear. This infrasound communication was confirmed by later studies by Dr. Katherine Payne.
Dr. Katharine Payne (born 1937) is a researcher in the Bioacoustics Research Program at the Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell University. In 1999, she founded the lab's Elephant Listening Project.
Briha
