By Amlan Home Chowdhury
Nature’s heart beats strong amid the hills. ~ Richard M. Milnes
This perhaps is the best way to describe the most beautiful of the “Seven Sisters” of northeastern India — Meghalaya. This truly is the “Alay” (abode) of “Megh” (cloud). The heart of nature really beats strong in this abode of clouds.
The most colourful Meghalaya where mountains kiss the clouds, forests lie strewn amidst the mountain slopes, streams pour water and meandering rivers flow quite unmindful of the exotic beauty that they add to this “Sister” of the North East. This is a mesmerising land indeed.
Ideally, a painter would find it his proud privilege to create manifold canvases of colour in depicting Meghalaya, a land that mesmerises everyone. But creating a wonderfully colourful coffee-table book with excellent photography too is no mean achievement.
Harsh, the 4th generation of the Jhunjhunwala family of Shillong, very aptly Christened his coffee table book as Mesmerising Meghalaya. Harsh virtually tried to give real expression to ‘Nature’s heart beats strong amid the hills’ through the lens of his camera in arresting the beauties of Meghalaya.
The author, a computer engineer turned author, flashed the beauties of Meghalaya in its most vivid manner in this coffee-table book that really would be a proud possession for those who feel the nature’s heart beats strong among the hills.
The Jhunjhunwala family is one of the oldest non-tribal families in Shillong. Harsh inherited his creative genius from his journalist father Dr Kamal Jhunjhunwala.
Taking keen interest in producing documentary films, this author of the coffee-table book is also interested in portraying manifold vividness of Meghalaya through audio-visual means.
For any creative thing, the spark of inspiration is needed. Asked what propelled him to undertake this arduous task of creating the 160 pages with 300 photographs for Mesmerising Meghalaya, Harsh divulged what sparked him to write the book. This is an interesting anecdote.
Nearly a decade back in 2008 when Harsh was trekking in Uttrakhand, he met an amateur lens-man taking photos with a SLR camera. He was taking amazing pictures. Harsh befriended him. But a couple of years later, he came to know that man engaged in nature photography left it as he thought there was no future in it. But Harsh was expecting him to become someone in the field of nature photography.
Here, Harsh had a spark. Harsh realised there are many nature photographers who do photography but leave it mid-way as they do not get opportunities. He then decided to create the coffee-table book in which new photographers would get chance to show their lens-skills. And he gave opportunities to 50 photographers to take snaps of nature for the book.
How many times do we find budding, talented photographers abandoning their passion for lack of exposure, motivation and the little push? Harsh asks. He completed Mesmerising Meghalaya to give that push to budding lens-men. Every photograph that appears in this coffee-table book has the name of the photographer with it.
Book: Mesmerising Meghalaya;
Publisher: Eastern Panorama; Pages: 160; Price: Rs 2000
