# Ajayan | A butterfly now carries the name of the renowned wildlife photographer and naturalist Suresh Elamon, a living tribute to a life devoted to wonder. Entomon, the quarterly journal of the Association for Advancement of Entomology, has in its latest issue turned its pages towards research on the butterflies across Kerala, like fleeting brushstrokes of colour.
In the monograph is a checklist of 328 species, gathered from forests, wetlands and highlands. Guided by Dr Kalesh S, the research team has christened a sub-species of the butterfly Sahyadri Spotted Royal, pottu vellambari in Malayalam, as ‘Sureshi’, the Latinised version; an honour for the photographer whose lens and language captured the delicate kingdom of butterflies more than four decades ago.
Author of the biography of the celebrated ornithologist KK Neelakandan, fondly known as Induchoodan, whose Keralathile Pakshikal remains the definitive word on the birds of Kerala, Suresh was once his student and companion on long treks across to identify birds. It was during these journeys in the mid-1980s, searching for birds in sunlit forests and monsoon thickets, that Suresh also turned his lens towards butterflies.
But when he showed these to his mentor and English professor, the master naturalist urged him not merely to photograph but to identify, to study, to know and document. Suresh confessed he lacked even the basic texts. Without hesitation, Induchoodan reached into his library and placed in his hands Butterflies of India by Wynter-Blyth. From that single gesture began Suresh’s lifelong flight into the world of winged colours, a journey carried on the delicate tremor of butterfly wings which earned him name across Kerala.
As Suresh recalls, the turning point arrived through writer and editor NV Krishna Warrier. At the time, Warrier’s column as editor in Kunkuman weekly was widely read. In one piece he lamented that Kerala had Induchoodan to write on birds, Dr Adiyodi to study snakes, yet no voice to celebrate the exquisite world of butterflies.
Suresh chanced upon the article and, moved by its challenge, wrote to Warrier offering to fill that silence by writing on butterflies as he had been studying them. The reply was swift: not in the weekly, said Warrier who was by then back in Mathrubhumi. It will be in the newspaper’s weekend edition. To Suresh’s astonishment, his piece appeared very soon as the lead article, and week after week his column unfolded, each instalment introducing readers to another species, another winged marvel. The series soon grew beloved, drawing many into the wonder-filled realm of these coloured, fluttering insects.
From that beginning, Suresh Elamon, once synonymous with butterflies, spread his wings further. Today, he stands as an acclaimed wildlife photographer and documentary filmmaker, his gaze expanding from delicate wings to the vast living tapestry of nature. This author first met him during a trek across the windswept grasslands of Munnar. There was Suresh perched precariously on the precipice of a rock, camera trained on the slow, powerful stride of a lone wild elephant far below.
At dawn the next day, faint silhouettes of a herd against the vast valley moved along the corridor to Parambikulam. Suresh stepped forward to lead, and a few of us followed, walking a long rugged trail as he filmed their quiet procession.
Years later, we met again, this time at a different location in Munnar itself, his video camera steady on a tripod midst a drizzle. With him was another renowned photographer M Balan, both waiting in patient silence to capture the mating of Nilgiri tahrs. For Suresh, the wild is always a temple, and waiting a form of prayer.
Dr Kalesh speaks of him with reverence: it was Suresh, he says, who inspired him to look closely at nature, which ultimately shaped this monumental monograph. He recalls how he and a friend were preparing a paper on the larvae of the butterfly Travancore Evening Brown they had got. He then learnt that Suresh had discovered the species, believed extinct for years. “Immediately, I reached out,” he recounts. “Suresh sir responded at once, handing me a bundle of literature on the butterfly. I accepted him as my guru, and instead of receiving gurudakshina, it was he who gave me the greater gift.”
This christening of the butterfly is a profound tribute to a great naturalist, one who, with quiet brilliance, opened the eyes of countless people in Kerala to the extraordinary world of butterflies. The particular butterfly is seen north and south of the Palakkad gap along Western Ghats. For now, it is recognised as a subspecies. Yet ongoing DNA studies may reveal deeper distinctions, and with them, the possibility of its rise as a species in its own right.
