My journey with Wild Karnataka began long before we made the film, with a personal dream of meeting David Attenborough. Years ago, I had saved for months to attend Wildscreen—the “Oscars of wildlife filmmaking”—in Bristol, hoping to see him and get his autograph. I waited three days, but he never came. I returned home disappointed.
Years later, while we were shooting Wild Karnataka and editing in a Bristol studio, we casually asked our executive producer if we could approach Attenborough to narrate the film. It was a half-serious suggestion tossed out after a couple of beers. Surprisingly, he said, “I’ll ask.” Around the same time, we had met Alastair Fothergill—the man behind Planet Earth and Blue Planet—who told me very simply, “You should just ask him.” So we did. We sent David the film, and he loved it. He rarely accepts narration offers, and it’s never about money. But this film moved him.
When our producer called and asked if I had “saved enough money,” I didn’t understand what he meant. Then he said, “David has said yes.” He accepted because he genuinely admired the film and because he liked that a team in India had made a full wildlife documentary independently. He even wrote, “It’s good to see peacocks finally not in somebody’s backyards, but in their natural habitat,” a comment shaped by England being full of peacocks.
We recorded the narration at a studio in London where he usually works. David is known for being unfailingly punctual, but that day he arrived late because of heavy rain. We stood waiting at the door, and when it opened, in walked the man whose voice I had heard all my life. He apologized for being “so late.” In my mind I was thinking, ‘Sir… you’re apologising to us?’, I was speechless. I’ve met many celebrities, but this felt different. He added, “I have a bit of a cold, but I’ll stay as long as required to get this right.”
When he began narrating, his voice and the music filled the studio, and when he said “Wild Karnataka,” all of us had tears in our eyes. We stopped looking at the script. An executive producer joked that we had “lost all rational thought.” Honestly, we had. Hearing him pronounce the name of my home state was overwhelming. He finished the entire narration in an hour and ten minutes, working so sharply and precisely that even the young audio technician couldn’t keep up.
His humor was unforgettable. One line in the script read, “Tigers only sweat through their paws.” Our producer corrected it, saying they also sweat through the area around the anus. Immediately David quipped, “It’s a little too early to be talking about breeding through one’s bottom.” That was his wit. He arrived alone, carrying his own files. I’ve seen television actors travel with an entourage, but here was David Attenborough—alone, humble, prepared.
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| Amoghavarsha J. S. with David Attenborough |
After we finished, he put on a Mysore peta and declared, “Maharaja of natural history!” Then he added, “Now I don’t have to think about what to wear for Christmas.”
When the film became successful, I wrote him a three-page letter thanking him. He replied with a handwritten note: “Dear Amogh Varsha, thank you very much for your most generous gift. I’m delighted to know Wild Karnataka has been such a success.” The line that humbled me most was: “My contribution to it was slight.” That is the kind of person he is. Such humans—they don’t make them anymore.
Wild Karnataka may well be the only Indian documentary he has narrated. He agreed simply because he felt an emotional connection to it. Many people who have worked with him told us this was one of his best voiceovers. It was a backyard story, not a remote Arctic one, and that moved him. He was amazed that a single Indian state could have such rich biodiversity, and pleasantly surprised by the sequences we had captured.
His influence on me is immense. He has an intuitive ability to connect with audiences by simplifying without diluting. He made wildlife accessible to the common person. At one point in the script, we had used the word “megafauna.” I worried that many would not understand it. During the recording, David simply said, “where the big animals roam.” That instinct—so natural to him—is what made generations fall in love with the natural world.
Over seventy years, he has repeatedly asked how we might encourage more people to connect with nature. He has always been medium-agnostic, from black-and-white films to 4K documentaries, never insisting on being overly scientific or academic. His approach has always been rooted in empathy. He wants to help audiences—most of whom may never see wild animals in their natural habitats—form a meaningful connection with them. If you read Zoo Quest, you see the measure of the man. In the 1950s, when a few chicks they were transporting refused to eat, he chewed their food himself and fed them from his mouth. That is the level of care and commitment he brought to his work. Having travelled more widely and for longer than almost anyone alive, he knows the state of the planet firsthand. It would be unwise not to listen to him.
He understands the challenges: unprecedented human pressure on habitats, especially in the oceans. Coral reefs are bleaching rapidly. I’ve dived across continents in recent years and have yet to see a fully alive, healthy reef. More than half the oxygen we breathe comes from the ocean. Losing it should worry us far more than it currently does.
He often speaks about how rapidly consumption has grown—when my parents were young, they took one flight a year; today many take one a week. Families that once had a single car now have four. And if 1.5 billion people aspire to the same “American dream,” where will the space come from? David talks about sustainability not as a sermon but as a reflection. He puts thoughts into the world and trusts local cultures to interpret them. His message is simple: nature is changing faster than it can cope.
There is a quieter side to David—his humility and discipline. After modifying a few lines in our script, he wrote to us: “I’ve changed small bits of the script. I hope it doesn’t take away from it.” At his age and mastery, he didn’t need to seek permission, yet he did. He feels to me like an enlightened being—ethical, grounded, deeply sincere. When we invited him to India for an event, his daughter, who manages his schedule, replied that he would come only if there was work. Even at ninety-six, he refused to spend time on recreation. That level of integrity is extraordinary.
As admirers, we want him to keep working forever. But he is ninety-nine. If we truly consider ourselves his fans, we must ask what responsibility we now carry. He has done more than his share. The question is: what do we do next? What do we learn from him, and how do we carry forward the values he embodied.
Amoghavarsha J. S.
Rajasekar
| Amoghavarsha J. S. |
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| Rajasekhar |
