BIOGRAPHY

My interest in the living form dates back to my PhD days when I actually started to understand the scientific importance of life around me. I began working on a strain of anaerobic archae bacteria scientifically known as Methanosarcina Barkeri. As days went by in research, I was awed by how nature helped such a living form to survive the onslaught of nature when other larger and smaller living forms couldn’t survive it. Even though the origin of these forms of anaerobic bacteria dates back to the archael age, it’s probably been about 25 years of research which have opened up only a portion of the mystery of its survival. The archaebacteria as they are more commonly known have abilities to survive in temperatures ranging from over 2000˚C in the volcanic areas to the sub zero conditions in the arctic zone. We still need to know a lot more of its genetic as well as proteomic components which might someday throw light on the unknown aspects of the much discussed term EVOLUTION.

It was quite by chance that my interest began building up around the elephants. Eventually, I have perhaps enjoyed watching the elephant more than all other species. That was mostly because their expression and behavior appeared so visible, so comparable to the society that we live in. I started to photograph them only as recently as 2003. I have no formal training in photography and am slowly learning to understand the various rules of photography and more importantly the digital workflow. Even though wildlife photography has become a very important passion for me, but I still get attracted more by the biology involved with the conservation of the wild species. During the past few years, I have had the chance of getting in touch with a few scientists across the world, who have been working for the conservation of the Asian elephants for the past 30 years. I shall discuss about their contribution in the articles section. Conservation biology is a very new branch of science and has the scope of integration of the most advanced subjects like molecular biology, biotechnology etc. Genetic studies have already caused a tremendous advancement in the understanding of the behavior of various species across the world and also helped to discover more and more new species emerging by the day.

I earn my living as a healthcare professional, managing perhaps the country’s one of the first private endocrine diagnostic laboratory (which was started by my father) set up 30 years ago. My commitment in my lab does not allow me to be out of station as much as I would have preferred. I had always wished to be a field scientist working in the area of conservation of wildlife but had to strike a balance with life and be happy with helping out with projects drawn up for the conservation of elephants in North Bengal.