Wildlife filmmakers Bedi Brothers (Rajesh Bedi and Naresh Bedi).
| Photo Credit: S.R. Praveen
Most people would run away from the prospect of spending harsh winters in the higher altitudes, but Bedi Brothers (Naresh Bedi and Rajesh Bedi), acclaimed wildlife filmmakers, spent three consecutive winters in the higher reaches of Ladakh, braving a difficult terrain, extreme cold, and eating the same canned food day after day, just to capture the elusivesnow leopardin its natural habitat.
“We had local trackers in different valleys to report to us whenever they are spotted. Towards one evening, when the sun was almost setting behind the mountain range, a snow leopard walked barely 6 feet away from my hide. He would pull a yak and stare at the lens. By then, it was difficult to capture more material as the sun went down,” remembers Rajesh Bedi in an interview to The Hindu on Friday. The duo were presented with the 16th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK)‘s lifetime achievement award.
Pioneers
Over the past five decades, they have become the first ones to film extensive footage in the natural habitats of snow leopard, red panda, gharial, Indian wild dog, Himalayan lynx and bar-headed geese, making them one of the pioneers in Indian wildlife filmmaking.
It all started with the interest in plant and animal life kindled in them by their father, an Ayurvedic practitioner, during their childhood days in Haridwar.
“Our father was keen to take us into the forests. He gifted us a Rolleicord camera and encouraged us to take a pictures for his writings. When he shot photographs, he used to go as close as possible,” says Naresh.
Rajesh’s entry into the big stage was by photographing the various moods and expressions of the least elusive animal – the cow. The life size images were put up at several popular exhibitions. The breakthrough in his career was series of images on snake worship published in the National Geographic magazine.
By this time, Naresh had graduated from the Film and Television Institute of India. The brothers soon got together to shoot their debut project The Ganges Gharial, filmed with a hand-cranked camera, revealed behavioural traits unknown before that. “Before that, it was assumed that their behaviour was similar to the other crocodiles,” says Naresh. In the late 1980s, they shot the documentary Whistling Hunters in Periyar in Kerala, capturing dholes, the Indian wild dogs, in their natural habitat. The BBC documentary was narrated by David Attenborough.
Effects of climate change
Over these decades of filming, they have seen and experienced closely the effects of climate change and global warming.
“In the mountains, the higher temperatures are making the ibex, the blue sheep, and other animals to move to higher altitude, and the snow leopard to even higher terrains. In many places, the grasslands, where elephants used to stay together for months, have now almost become a desert. Wildlife films and books directly contribute to spread the message of conservation. Without that, you are not doing justice to your profession,” says Rajesh.
