Call of the Wild

This is an excerpt from the chapter ‘Call of the Wild’.

Chapter Introduction

At 22, Kalyan Varma had a ‘dream job’ with Yahoo. But one fine day he quit and pursue his passion – wildlife photography. Today, he is a living example of an ‘idiot’ who’s living his dream and making a living, out of something he truly loves.

When my brother was little, he wanted to be a BEST bus conductor; when I was little, I dreamt of becoming an astronaut. When Kalyan Varma was little, he said to himself, “I wish I could live in the jungle watching animals all day!”
Today, my brother is a brand manager with a multinational corporation.
I am a writer who looks up at the stars and thinks, maybe – some day.
But guess what, Kalyan Varma actually spends his days watching animals in the jungle. And, taking their pictures.
Kalyan Varma represents the big dreams of the little people. Dreams that generally fall by the wayside, as we grow up and get ‘real’. But the reality is, we can make our lives what we want them to be. We can clear a path through the jungle of expectations and limitations and be the Tarzan swinging from the vine of our true potential.
Aiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! But what about practicality? As I sit in the iconic Koshy’s eating the blandest of vegetarian continental lunches, I think to myself: “Most of us live like this cauliflower, smothered in rich white sauce…”
And then we look for some tabasco, to spice it up.
But if you create your own special recipe for ‘success’, like Kalyan did.
It will fill not just your stomach but your heart, your mind, your soul.

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Excerpt

Like many yuppie software engineers, one of his favourite pastimes was driving out of the city on weekends. Kalyan’s trip was to visit wildlife sanctuaries like Bandipur and Nagarhole. And take pictures.
“Wildlife photography was like a marriage of two ‘first loves’. I really liked photography and I really liked wildlife… but I had no formal training, in either.”
Learning by tinkering, observing and actually doing is a recurring theme in Kalyan’s life.
“I don’t have formal education in computer science. With photography it is all self taught. With wildlife, I am not a biologist – again it is self taught.”
So in late 2004, Kalyan took a radical decision.
“I like wildlife. I like photography. So let me spend some time in the forest.”
One can always get back to a job after three or four months, what the hell!
Kalyan contacted an eco-tourism resort and said, “Hey, I want to stay in your resort for three months.”
They said, “Well, you’ll have to pay.”
I said, “I’m not going to pay – what can we do?”
They said, “OK, why don’t you work for us. You speak good English, you know wildlife, so you can take our visitors out for a safari, give them a tour…”
The deal was: no salary, only food and accommodation.
I said, “Great – that’s perfect for me.”
And that was how Kalyan simply packed his bags and moved into ‘Jungle Lodges and Resorts’ in BR Hills, a wildlife sanctuary near Mysore. A move which was to change his life, forever.
Since he was not taking any salary, Kalyan did not have any major responsibilities as an employee of the company.
“Morning I would go in the jeep safari, evening I would go in the jeep safari. In the daytime I would just take my vehicle and drive around in the forest. It was just the best time of my life.”
24 hours in the jungle meant, you got to see and actually be with wildlife. And the people who know them best.
“I would take tribal guys and just follow a tiger for 2-3 days. Follow leopard kills, follow elephants. Learn about birds, play with monkeys. I spent so much time them that they recognise me, treat me… accept me as part of their troupe now.”
Wow.
And there were some super-close, super-dangerous encounters with animals.
“The first time I saw a tiger, I just couldn’t pick up my camera; I was shivering so much. And this happened another 3-4 times!”
Another time, Kalyan was setting a ‘camera trap’ i.e. a camera which is tied to a tree. This camera detects heat and hence photos of any animal passing by automatically.
“So there I was, tying the camera to the tree and I didn’t realise, just a little above me, at the fork of the branch, there was a leopard. I heard something and looked up and saw it smiling at me from a distance of two feet. It was the scariest moment of my life, I think. I almost peed in my pants that day!
Kalyan ran for his life and lived to tell the tale! And there were the ‘fear factor’ moments but it only got him more addicted.
At the end of three months, Kalyan just could not go back. He was loving it so much that he ended up staying in the jungle for a whole year!

But, reality bites. Kalyan had enough savings to support himself for a year but this couldn’t go on forever. And yet, he could not come back and take up a regular, strait-jacketed job (for which he had offers).
“I decided to become an IT security consultant. Because I thought I would be able to spend 50% of my time in the city, and 50% in the forest.”
Sounds like the best of both worlds. But turned out, to be the worst!
“I worked like that for the whole of 2006. And that was one of the difficult periods of my life. I could not do justice to either consulting or wildlife.”
Kalyan would be in the middle of the jungle and suddenly he would get a call from a client saying, “There’s an audit tomorrow morning… you need to be here.”
And then while he was in the city, busy with the audit someone would call from there and say, “The tiger just made a kill, why aren’t you here to photograph it?”…