For rural India, sharing space with wildlife is second nature. But as development gets fast-tracked, the delicate, value-based balance of man and nature is tilting; coexistence is giving way to conflict.
My engagement with nature began with a fascination for wildlife and with remote areas far from the chaos of the city. This led me, almost exactly two decades ago, to the BR Hills in Karnataka, and since then I have criss-crossed India exploring, learning, documenting, photographing, and filming.
My search for wild places led to two life-changing realizations. The first was meeting communities whose lives seemed inseparable from the landscapes around them. The second was understanding that nature is not separate from us at all. It surrounds us, shapes us, and continues through us.
Nature does not know that it is supposed to exist only inside a designated National Park or Wildlife Reserve. Nature is everywhere. It is amidst us, around us, and in constant conversation with human lives.
I came to feel that while protected areas were created with good intentions, they also severed an older connection. The resulting fault lines widened: harmony gave way to conflict, and coexistence grew more fragile. This project follows those fault lines.
Nature without Borders is an attempt to document places where people and wildlife live in closest contact, and where the tensions between conservation, livelihood, law, culture, and development become most visible. These are not simple stories, and they resist simple conclusions. What they do offer is a deeper look at the relationship between people and the natural world in contemporary India.