BENGALURU: A sweltering summer day in February. An empty water hole in Kabini. And there, on a road that loops around the water body, was where wildlife photographer Shaaz Jung spotted the elusive black panther. Bagheera may have been a character in Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, but spotting a melanistic leopard isn’t just stuff that stories are made of. For Jung, the past few years have been like a dream. Lasting all of a few seconds, Jung’s retelling of this “powerful” first meet with the rare black panther is enough to give anyone goosebumps.
“It was like nothing you’ve seen before in the forest – just a black figure in the distance. He was shy then, so he just looked at us and ran into the thickness,” says Jung, whose photos of Saya – the name given to the leopard – went viral on social media last week, and were even shared by aunt Kareena Kapoor Khan (Jung’s father, Saad bin Jung, is Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi’s nephew). This first sighting took place in 2016, a year after Jung learned of the big cat’s existence in Kabini. “I was numb for the first 2-3 seconds. The driver had to remind me to lift my camera,” says Jung, who will share more instances of sightings and discuss conservation efforts during a conversation with WeWork India CEO Karan Virwani, as part of the co-working space and Embassy Group’s Stories platform.
While Saya’s photos have garnered lakhs of likes on social media, there’s more to the picture than what meets the eye. Behind every mesmerising shot of Saya’s piercing eyes or lithe body atop a tree lies 6-8 exhausting hours of tracking in the jungle. After Jung approached National Geographic with a script, he spent the years from 2017 to 2020 in the Kabini jungles with a research and filming permit to gather footage of the panther. “Your sixth sense is actually a strong factor when it comes to tracking. You can feel the tension before you see a predator, because the forest starts behaving differently,” explains Jung. With Saya (Hindi for shadow) having established a 15-20 sq km territory for himself, Jung was eventually able to figure out where to anticipate the animal.
The seasons played a role too: Summer meant chances of a sighting near a water body, while tall trees were a better bet in monsoon. Saya’s melanism is a result of a recessive trait, one that even the black cat is aware of. “He knew he was different so he learned to adapt – by climbing trees with black barks and camouflaging with shadows in daylight,” says Jung. There was more that set Saya apart, like his mating ritual of courting multiple female leopards at once, or like Jung explains, “He knew his gene was recessive and that he had to work harder to pass the gene down.” Having returned to India in 2010 instead of taking up a corporate career in the US, Jung started as a naturalist and guide before he took to documenting leopards.
While his love for photography came from his introduction to Scarface (a popular leopard of Kabini), it was Saya who inspired him to take up cinematography. Jung also helps his family run the Bison Resort, a tented camp built on eco-tourism guidelines. Due to the pandemic, the resort was allowed to reopen in June but has shut again due to the rise in number of cases. “Hopefully people will understand that the way forward is to respect the environment,” says Jung, who also hopes to publish two books (one on Saya and another on short stories from the wild) next year. (Shaaz Jung will be in conversation with Karan Virwani on July 20, from 4pm-5pm, on WeWork Facebook page)