I sometimes wonder what happened to Tonmoy Ghosh.
Peter Wolff and I met him about 7 years ago when we were stuck over a weekend in India and decided to visit the Sunderbans.
Tonmoy was a 20-something naturalist/photographer, from a town in West Bengal known for being overrun with cobras (yes, the snake). Fresh from spending a month living in a tree on the border of Myanmar, where he was studying a rare bird, he was our naturalist for the trip.
As a teenager, his parents nearly disowned him because he wanted to be a naturalist and not an accountant, lawyer, doctor or some other professional. So he took up photography. When he started making a little money selling nature photos to publications like National Geographic, his parents softened a little. He used some of that money to start a non-profit in his village to teach people about snake safety.
While in the Sunderbans (two hours by car from Calcutta, then two hours by boat from there to our Jungle Camp), Tonmoy took me on a night hike in the pitch black of our island. At low tide, he took me on a barefoot hike in the mangrove swamp. I’d like to think I wasn’t bitten by something sinister because he was guiding me. He explained the bee boxes next to the huts on the island, where the villagers with the dangerous profession of honey-collecting (tigers y’know) kept hives, the wax of which was more valuable than the honey.
We were told that during the last tiger census, there were only 279 Bengal tigers left in this 70,000 square-mile delta between India and Bangladesh. And not to get our hopes up for spotting one.
Tonmoy must have been our lucky charm, because on day one, we saw a huge Bengal swimming from a distant island, right to the front of our boat, then jumping from the water, shaking in one motion and running into the jungle. Start-to-finish it was probably a 3 – 4 minute sighting. The boat captain and the guide were cheering and yelling. Peter and I were dumbfounded, watching through our binoculars. Tonmoy was calmly snapping pictures with what looked like a pretty good lens.
He didn’t think 30 – 50 feet in front of our boat was close enough, so didn’t like the pictures. Peter and I begged for a copy. We offered to pay. We gave him our contact information. He promised to send it.
He didn’t.
Back in Calcutta, we invited him to spend the day with us, which he happily accepted. It takes a day and a half to get to his village via the bus, train, walk schedule and he was in no hurry. The most nerve-wracking part of the day for him was when we insisted he join us for lunch in the hotel restaurant. Eating unfamiliar food, indoors, with utensils and so many people in an enclosed space made him uncomfortable. We also had to convince him to keep his shoes on.
We gave him a nice tip for his services and said goodbye late in the afternoon.
I wonder where he is. Loved that kid.
But he does owe me a picture.
