A tigress bathing in a waterhole. That sight was the turning point for Rohan Chakravarty, cartoonist and creator of Green Humour, a website that addresses environmental issues. After this sighting, Rohan quit dentistry and took up drawing animals full time. “I owe thanks to the tigress (at Nagzira Tiger Reserve, Maharashtra). But the biggest thanks I owe is to my late pet dog Natwarprakash alias Naughty, for giving me a sense of humour in the first place,” writes Rohan, in an email, from a remote part of Uttar Pradesh that has limited network.
Green Humour, which was started in 2010, while Rohan was still in college, has come a long way. With over 250-odd cartoons on burning issues of extinction, global warming, and even the recent poaching of cubs at the Thai tiger temple on the page, it is the first series of cartoons and comic strips from India to be distributed internationally (after debuting in GoComics in 2013). The works from the site have been featured in several conservation campaigns and publications by organisations such as the WWF, Wildlife Trust of India and Nature Conservation Foundation, among others.
How has the journey been?
It has been quite like that of an Olive Ridley Turtle hatchling’s walk from its egg into the sea. The baby turtle has to escape the jaws of gulls, crows, dogs and crabs to reach the sea, where newer and bigger threats abound (sharks and crocs). But, once it hits the sea, it is in its own element. I would say that I have just touched the sea and am figuring out how to deal with the bigger threats (such as finding new publishers and learning to file taxes!) while frolicking about and having a lot of fun drawing.
How do you conceive a humorous cartoon What is How does the process of producing a funny cartoon from something you saw in the wild?
something what you saw in the wild to a funny cartoon, go?
Being in the wild is very much the fuel that drives me. But drawing on the field requires a special talent that I unfortunately do not possess. I do make little scribbles and notes though, when watching animals. Conceiving comics and illustrations is a lengthy process for me, and it is always done at home. I do remember drawing a cartoon on otters though, while resting on the banks of Manas River at the Indo-Bhutan border, in the most beautiful evening of my life.
Does each piece involve a lot of research?
The part about drawing my comics that I love the most is that there are no recurring characters (except an odd TV presenter). So, it is exciting as well as challenging when my next subject is, say a Saola or a Namib Desert Beetle, creatures I have never even heard about. Research then, of course, is imperative and indispensable. I read books on natural history and every wildlife magazine I can lay my hands on. The web, too, is a major help these days.
Do you think humour is the best way to raise awareness?
I don’t know if it is the best way, but it is certainly an effective one. The human mind is accustomed to retain as well as respond to humour better than plain information. It is also a more successful way of reaching out to people with shorter attention spans (including myself). I recall receiving an e-mail from a reader in Peru who was planning to get a Pygmy Marmoset (the world’s smallest monkey that is threatened by the exotic pet trade) as a pet, but decided otherwise after reading my comic about the marmoset trade.
A few subjects, if stripped of the humour content, are standalone horror stories. How do you convert a serious topic into something that a five-year-old understands?
The key is to think like a five-year-old. Maybe that is what defines a cartoonist. If you retain the imagination you had at five, even when you’re in the skin of a twenty-eight-year-old, this is the job for you. I simplify the issue I am tackling, and at the same time, ensure that it makes you rethink, share and discuss.
The work that you spent the maximum time on?
The Wildlife Map of India — my little magnum opus. It has 115 animals spread out in a giant illustration that shows in great, painstaking detail everything that wild India has to offer at a glance. The project took nearly a year’s homework, and three months of discussion with my brother, who is a wildlife scientist and a blunt critic.
So, what’s next?
I draw for the fun of drawing, and planning only makes it seem like a clerical job. I am working on a couple of illustrated maps, and have also wrapped up illustrating a book on food for kids for Kalpvriksh.
FAVOURITE FIVE
Funniest work yet: Asking me to pick a favourite comic is like asking the Giant Pacific Octopus which of her 200,000 babies is closest to her. But yes, there is one on the endangered Amur Leopard that makes me guffaw each time I look at it.
Wildlife comic: Rosemary Mosco who draws Bird and Moon comics and Seppo Leinonen from Finland.
Non-wildlife comic: Gary Larson. I mean, can you name any other cartoonist who has a beetle named after him?
Song: ‘Ye Kaun Chitrakaar Hai’, written by Bharat Vyas.
Quote: Aldo Leopold’s rhetorical but sharp question from A Sand County Almanac’ : “Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?” Says a lot about what we are losing out as a blindly multiplying species, doesn’t it?
