The city’s most feted wildlife photographer wore waders to navigate his way through a riverine Ballygunge on Tuesday, just hours after the night of calamitous rain.
Dhritiman Mukherjee, an award-winning nature photographer and conservationist, wore the waterproof gear to reach a guest house on Anil Maitra Road in Ballygunge Place from his sister’s home near Bondel Gate.
A 30-second clip he posted on Facebook shows him walking through chest-deep water past submerged cars. The water had entered the ground floors of many homes. In the video, Mukherjee is seen tying a bag to a rope, which a young man then pulls up from a first-floor balcony.
“Finally, I got to use the wader I bought last year for working inside rivers, as I found the network of rivers just around my home in Calcutta yesterday,” he wrote in the caption. “By the way, we are all good now. There’s no more water at my place today, but many areas are still waterlogged.”
A wader suit is a waterproof garment designed for outdoor activities. It keeps the wearer dry by covering them from the feet up to the thighs, chest, or neck. Made from materials such as PVC or nylon, these suits often come with built-in boots, adjustable straps, and pockets for convenience.
Mukherjee said he went out in the gear to deliver food and water to a friend stranded in the guest house.
“The wader suit kept me dry and protected from possible waterborne infections,” he said. “I bought it last year in Alaska. I’ve used it for shooting in shallow streams and rivers in the Western Ghats, mostly in Karnataka, earlier this year.”
The Western Ghats are home to a wide range of aquatic and semi-aquatic species, including endemic freshwater fish, frogs, crabs, and water birds such as pelicans and storks.
Mukherjee is no stranger to extreme terrains and underwater shoots. He has dived into the frozen Lake Baikal in Siberia to photograph the elusive Nerpa seal, captured images of giant American crocodiles off the Mexican coastline in the Caribbean Sea, and documented all five shark species considered most dangerous to humans: the Great White, Tiger Shark, Bull Shark, Oceanic White Tip, and Hammerhead.
He has been featured in National Geographic Traveller, Lonely Planet, BBC, and The New York Times, and is an ambassador for Round Glass, a foundation that promotes the “well-being of the planet.”
Ballygunge was among the worst-hit areas in the city, receiving over 250mm of rain in just five hours between Monday night and Tuesday morning. Several roads remained under chest-deep water through most of Tuesday and parts of Wednesday.
Like most Calcuttans, Mukherjee said the intensity of the rain was unlike anything he had seen before.