ANIL T PRABHAKAR
Helping Hand

Helping Hand ; A glimpse of an unforgettable moment
Going out in the woods and taking pictures during leisure time is a passion; I love to grab lovely moments from the life of wild animals without disturbing them or their natural habitats. Recently I chanced to behold a spectacular sight during a safari at BOSF survival forest; an Orangutan challenged the humanity in me.
The biggest fear of the orangutans in the jungle is the poisonous snakes. BOSF Warden's main task in the Conservation Forest is to clean up rivers; in case of any report about snakes or predators, warden should remove and relocate them to appropriate places where they ideally belong and secure the orangutan’s habitat.
I witnessed an unusual incident during my trekking in the survival forest.
We were trekking near the island forest and were on the other side of the river, and we had a Wildlife Guard for guiding us. He was explaining the typical characteristics and other important features about Orangutan and BOSF activities. Suddenly I noticed another Wildlife Guard plunge into the muddy river.
I asked the Wildlife Guard, who was with me, what was happening there and he replied that the warden was doing the regular maintenance work.
Usually the Guards get into the river to catch the snakes if any, hiding behind the bushes and along the banks of the river, as the poisonous snakes might brumate behind them. While the warden was doing his job, I noticed one female orangutan go closer to the river bank and started watching amusingly what the Guard was doing. I clicked a few closeup photos of orangutan. The Guard kept searching for snakes and cleaning the river banks, though he seemed to struggle moving his legs on the muddy floor of the river, as far as I could perceive. He kept trying to pull out his legs and wanted to move further, and suddenly the female Orangutan who quietly remained as a spectator got up and came closer and stretched one of her hands towards the guard, as if she were offering assistance to get out of the thick mud. This might have lasted about three to four minutes. I was really amazed at this unexpected, sweet gesture from the orangutan. Somehow, I managed to fix my camera and capture this heartwarming, unique moment and could get four frames of the event. Unfortunately, the wildlife guard declined her kind gesture and managed to move away from the orangutan.
After the completion of his work, the guard got out of the river and came towards us. Then I asked him curiously why he didn't accept the orangutan’s offer. He said she was still ‘wild’ and he couldn’t predict how they would react. Moreover, there’re strict guidelines for the staff to avoid unwanted interaction with them, since it might end up with hazardous circumstances sometimes adversely affecting the safety of the orangutan and putting them in peril. Above all, they keep the animals so that they adopt more of their original, wild nature and bring back to the main rainforests in Borneo Island. Since these apes were rescued from the forest fire, hunting, habitat loss etc due to deforestation, they were brought here for medication, as they suffered from the trauma or serious wounds or burns as a consequence of the calamities or cruelties by mankind. Once BOSF treats these animals and they’re found fit to be back to the wilderness with strength, they will be released in the jungle. This is the great service that BOSF is doing for the survival of the critically endangered species.
Actually, I took the above-mentioned photograph on 8th September 2019 and I posted it in January 2020 on social media especially Facebook and Instagram. There was a thought process behind that post. I posted the photo with a caption. “Let me help you?; Once Humanity is dying in Mankind, sometimes animals are guiding us back to our basics”. The irony is, we, the human beings are destroying their habitat, yet they are offering a helping hand towards us. The world is inhabited by us, humans, who aren’t willing to care for each other, our minds filled with selfishness, ego and animosity gathering up like venom. So we should seriously brood over this grave depravity and try to seek what makes us different from the animals, the power of reasoning and the inherent virtue called “humanity” and protect our values and our nature for posterity. I still believe this is the only true, ultimate hope for mankind.

Author
Starting his photographic sojourn as a photojournalist, Anil T. Prabhakar moved to other genres of the artform soon with elan. A firm believer that it is the person behind the camera who creates the images, he attributes both success and failure to the doer rather than to his tool.
A self taught photographer, Anil landed a job in the Indonesian Mining Industry and continued to do serious photography. His job which required him to travel extensively, allowed him to visit far reaches of the Indonesian Archipelago and other South East Asian countries. One is not sure, but it could have been the vastness of the Indonesian landscape that might have spurred him to shoot landscapes extensively in his early years.

Website
www.reminiscenceframes.com

BACK TO GALLERY