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| Eminent photographer Bishu Nandi plays with a squirrel. Picture by Prashant Mitra |
He can pass off as a respectable, middle-aged man in his fifties and has not changed for as long as his older acquaintances can remember. Bishu Nandi, brother of Amala Shankar, does not look his age though he claims to have seen as many as 76 summers. What prompted him to remain a life-long bachelor or, for that matter, to settle in Ranchi, is difficult to ascertain. But Nandi himself, somewhat unconvincingly, explains that it was his love for nature that prompted him to settle down here. As for remaining a bachelor, he has a fairly simple take: he is yet to fall in love !
Nandi is known as a photographer and makes a precarious living by taking wedding and commercial pictures. He admits as much when he disarmingly says that he is always hard-up and has little or no savings. But that has not deterred him from pursuing his passion of Nature and photography. He prefers the company of the young and at the first available opportunity, rushes off to the mountains or to the forests. In April this year he was at a base camp in the Himalayas –his way of celebrating his 76th birthday.
Meeting him at his modest home can be disconcerting. Because he is apt to show you testimonials , certificates, letters and of course photographs related to celebrities. Pandit Ravi Shankar , for example, wrote, “He plays different ragas through his photographs.” Magician P.C. Sorcar ( Jr) expressed his appreciation in the following words, “ Bishu is in fact a magician…I am proud to have a friend like him.” Bhupen Hazarika writes, “ I still remember the first day I met Bishu at the Times Square in New York…”.
It was his brother-in-law and dancing legend Uday Shankar who , Nandi claims, taught him the basics of photography. Udayshankar himself, he recalls, was a good photographer and used a Leica camera. Young and impressionable, he possibly imbibed his passion for the arts, Nature and aesthetics also from Udayshankar who taught him to see not just with his eyes but also with his mind. He also accompanied Udayshankar’s troupe abroad, visited the United States, Canada and large parts of Europe.
He gets understandably nostalgic about his days abroad and his chance meetings with Hollywood legends like Greta Garbo, Johny Weissmueller, Paul Robson and others. Alfred Hitchcock , he recalls with pride, took him and Udayshankar to watch his film, ‘The Louisiana Story’. Photographs of these legends are today his most prized possession.
A man of many parts, the young man has been passionate about collecting match boxes and soaps, many of them picked up from hotels abroad. He loves both the mountain and the sea, prefers a ship to a plane and runs off to mountaineering expeditions whenever he can.
On a mountaineering trip to Muktinaath a few years ago, Nandi claims to have been left behind at an altitude of 15,000 feet. The fault was his because he had slowed down and even stopped to take photographs. A Japanese lady climbing down the mountain rescued him and led him to a village on the mountains. Villagers later helped him reach the top and join up with his group. He admits with a shy smile, “ What can I do, I am a little obstinate”.
Equally passionate about hunting once, Nandi claims he has never touched a firearm since he shot a deer dead in the Sundarbans. It was actually a tiger he was after, he recalls. He had spotted a kill, indicating that the tiger was somewhere around. Nandi climbed a tree and waited for the tiger, which never turned up. As dusk was approaching, he became nervous and seeing a deer, shot it impulsively, hoping that his team members would hear the shot and lead him to safety. He regrets his impulsive and illegal action.
The other regret he nurses is his inability to undertake a rafting expedition to Colombo. The raft had been made with 30 thousand bamboo sticks , he recalls, and permission obtained. It was to take around 45 days and the expedition had been blessed by the then prime minister, Ms Indira Gandhi. But political turmoil over the Indian Ocean island Diego Garcia, put paid to their plans. At the eleventh hour, the expedition, Nandi rues, had to be put off.
Anupam Sheshank