Most of us would walk past without batting an eyelid if we saw someone crushing a centipede. S Venkataraman was not one to do that. He stopped to rescue the creature from a rough bunch of men.
“I did not know they were high-profile people. In any case, I blasted them and took away the specimen,” says the slightly-built man, popularly known as ‘Poochi’ Venkat, the accomplished macro photographer. He was speaking at a multimedia presentation of his pictures on the occasion of Madras Week, organised by the Madras Naturalists Society (MNS) at Studio Palazzo art gallery on Tuesday.
Caterpillars apart, stick insects, Blue Pansy butteflies and a wide range of centipedes, dragonflies and damselflies flitted across the screen. The Chennai connect of the pictures was that all were shot in the heart of the city. While some were recent photos, others were slides taken several years ago that had been converted to digital format. Speaking to City Express, Sripad Sridhar, a member of MNS, said, “Usually, Madras Week focuses on the history and architecture of the city. But we are the only city to have a national park within the city limits and that houses the endangered blackbuck. We also have 150 species of birds and innumerable insect species. But we are losing this rich wildlife. Chennai used to have more than 450 species of water birds, now we are down to 200. Birds like the white stork and black buzzard have not been seen for the past 10 to 15 years. Other contributors included Devanand Paul and Class Eight student Vikas Madhav.
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