A few years ago, when I was in England about to receive a Panda Award (or the Green Oscar), I had the privilege to briefly meet Sir David Attenborough, the godfather of nature and environment films. “Congratulations, kakapos are absolutely magnificent birds,” he encouragingly said, as he shook my hand and gave me the most gentle and heart-warming smile. MY LIFE IS COMPLETE, I thought. Dazed and overwhelmed, I held back tears of joy as I walked away. That brief encounter was the most exhausting 60 seconds of my life. I had met my hero, the man who had inspired my enormous fascination with the natural world and so decided my choice of career. And If I had known that a couple of years later I’d be on an exclusive crew for a documentary shoot with him, I’d probably have dropped dead.

A DREAM COME TRUE

For 65 years, Attenborough has brought the magnificence, the mysteries and the cruel realities of the animal kingdom to our television screens. He has travelled the continents investigating, analysing and documenting the natural world to tell the complex stories of our planet with his inimitable mix of gravitas and unbridled delight. His immense and profound influence as a naturalist and presenter for the BBC has inspired thousands of people to serve the natural world in innumerable ways.

Like all other wildlife filmmakers, it has been my dream to work with him. Once. So perhaps it was all part of a grander design that I won the Charles Wallace Professional Bursary which took me to the UK to work with the top natural history film production companies in Bristol in 2017, including the BBC and a company called Humble Bee. Small, busy, intimate, and with the best documentaries in production, I loved it from the moment I walked in. I loved it some more when Stephen Dunleavy, the executive producer and MD, decided to include me as crew on the last phase of Sir David Attenborough’s latest documentary on the life and times of Jumbo, the giant African elephant famous in Victorian times.

ON SIR DAVID’S CREW

Once the emails had gone out and I was officially on the crew, I discovered the director had a Bengali name! Sharmila Choudhury, part German, part Bengali, had coincidentally lived and grown up in Calcutta in the 70’s and 80’s and studied in La Martiniere till she was 15. Hers was a familiar name. I had seen it many times in the credits of mega landmark films like Attenborough’s Life of Birds.

London. June 22. I arrived embarrassingly early at the London Zoological Society Library, the venue of the shoot. Standing on the wet pavement, in the cold rain, I pondered a surreal coincidence: the ZSL was where my grandfather, erstwhile director of the Zoological Survey of India, had worked for his PhD in zoology, under the mentorship of the famous Dr Julian Huxley, who also happened to co-star in Sir David’s very first major television programme. With a Jungian concatenation, different strands of coincidence seemed to have met to create this virtually inconceivable opportunity of my life.

Sir David likes working with a chosen few and everyone on this shoot had worked with him many times before and knew him well. So it really had to be a miracle that I was here standing in the cold rain, waiting for the great man.

As he drove up, I caught a glimpse of his impossibly white hair. Dressed in his favourite shade of light blue shirt and trousers, he warmly greeted the crew. I wasn’t sure if he had even noticed me.

The shoot began. An assortment of old pictures and books were laid out in the library, while Sir David explained the story behind each, dissecting the story of Jumbo in meticulous detail. Even at the age of 92 his memory and delivery are impeccable. A few minutes to memorise his lines, and that’s it. If he does happen to make a mistake, a little fumble for example, he isn’t very easy on himself. He doesn’t like getting it wrong.

As I watched from behind the scenes, I wondered what a miracle it was. Me, 29, Sir David, 92: what were the chances of my career timeline ever overlapping his?

As we waited for the next shot to be set up, I tentatively walked up to him for a chat. We talked about Dr Huxley and my grandfather, about kakapos and elephants and the notorious swamp tigers of the Sunderbans. I promised to send him a few of my films. He preferred it to be on VCR, not DVD. That strange preference made a lot more sense a little later when his “cutting-edge mobile phone” emerged from his pocket. It was ancient but he proudly claimed, “It even has a calculator in it.”

Sir David is above the innovations of modern life. He doesn’t have an email address. Or a driving licence. The man never took the driving test because he “never really thought there was much need for it”. He has an impossibly sweet tooth. One ice cream and three jam tarts in quick succession is light business. He doesn’t like the crusts of pizza, and neither do I! And then of course there is his very English sense of humour. He observed  that he needed a good breakfast to start the day. But of course, he quipped that at his age “breakfast was all pills” and he’d “rattle if you shook (him)”.

A WARM FAREWELL

The next few days were spent at an elephant sanctuary where he brought the story of Jumbo alive with the kind of perfection that only he can manage. On the last day of the shoot, it sank in that the impossible had happened. I had spent four days in the company of my hero. But now when it was finally time to wrap up, I couldn’t help but walk up to him and say what every fan in the world probably wants to tell him. That he was the reason I had chosen wildlife filmmaking as a career and that it had been my greatest honour and privilege to work with him.

He didn’t shake my hand this time. He gave me a little hug and a kiss on my left cheek and wished me the very best with everything in the future.

As he drove away, I realised the virtue of believing in each of your impossible dreams. The importance of relentlessly pursuing your aspirations, despite the odds of geography and opportunity stacked against you. It’s true, there’s magic in believing.

And in case you’re wondering, yes, I did eventually wash my left cheek.

(Attenborough & the Giant Elephant premieres on BBC One at 9pm on Sunday)