Doc hopes to win hearts with wildlife photos

MUMBAI: The safari hat replaces the surgical cap often. One such time made Dr Ramakanta Panda drink six to seven litres of water. Armed with his heavy army-fatigue-shrouded long lens, the cardiac surgeon had just spent over seven hours under an unforgiving Madhya Pradesh sun. But the tiger—one of the many striped royals of Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve—refused to wake up. Exhausted, the conservator accompanying Panda suggested they head back but the doctor, who had once spent 16 hours in the operation theatre fixing a heart that had 17 blocks, coaxed her to stay just a few minutes longer. What followed was a moment she hadn’t seen in her 20 years of work in the forest. Eyes still closed, the predator arose, stretched its paws and hoisted its hind, as if executing a sun salutation.Captured promptly by the surgeon, the stretching tiger of Bandhavgarh is among 130 elusive creatures spanning the world’s biggest tusker to the Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher that currently populate the walls of Jehangir Art Gallery. Titled ‘Heartbeats’ (“heart is what keeps us alive,” he says), the show from November 22 to 27 marks the first solo exhibition for Panda, chairman of the Asian Heart Institute and Research Centre, whose Instagram profile reads “heart surgeon by passion and photographer for relaxation”.Panda, who has treated netas from Lalu Prasad Yadav to Manmohan Singh, sneaks off to Karnala Bird Sanctuary at 5am on workdays at times and visits Africa four times a year to chase pachyderms whose tusks touch the ground.Proceeds from the exhibition—curated by naturalist, writer and photographer Sunjoy Monga—will go towards Asian Wildlife Trust, a non-profit set up by Dr Panda that has undertaken initiatives from donating Rs 7.5 lakh for the first ambulance for wildlife and animal rescue in Mumbai to supplying sewing machines to tribal women in MP’s Kanha National Park and Tiger Reserve to earn a living by stitching school uniforms. We also published the following articles recently