In Pune on May 9, man with a green funnybone and a wake-up call

Green Humour is considered the world’s largest online collection of cartoons, comics and illustrations on wildlife and the environment. In December 2013, it was picked up by the international comics platform Gocomics and became the first series of cartoons and comic strips from India to be distributed globally.

Green Humour has received awards from the United Nations Development Programme, WWF International and the Royal Bank of Scotland, among others. Chakravarty has been invited to make live art at COPs 26 to 29, the United Nations climate change conferences.

On May 9, the cartoonist and illustrator will make a rare trip to Pune, at Pagdandi Bookstore, to discuss Bird Business, his new book that delves into the surprising lives of birds.

More than 100 birds have been covered in the book as the author highlights the many peculiarities among birds that laymen and even bird watchers often overlook. The Nicobar megapode, for instance, is only found in the Great Nicobar, and it is from the only family of birds known to compost. There are greater racket-tailed drongo, which is an accomplished mimic and can reproduce metallic jingling sounds, and birds that dance, mimic and flirt.

“I’ve been bird watching for around 20 years, and everything I’ve learnt on this journey has gone into creating the book. When I started Green Humour, it was a sort of distraction for me from the rut of animation because I used to do a lot of corporate projects as an animator. I needed something to challenge myself more creatively. Over time, as I started to secure columns and spaces for Green Humour in the media, I began to realise that it comes with responsibility,” says Chakravarty, who is trained as a dentist.

“Initially, it would only be the science and the conservation community that would engage with my work. Later, people from all walks of life started to engage with it. That was when even my narrative started to get longer and more complex, and include a lot of not just wildlife conservation but also the politics around it. I tried to show that this is not just an environmental matter but also a social and a political one,” says Chakravarty.

Bird Business has resulted from Chakravarty’s conviction that field guides that are available on birds and bird watching only tell you how to identify some birds and never go beyond that.

“This book tries to bridge the communication gap in a visual and entertaining manner,” he says. Chakravarty himself goes out every morning, usually in the company of his two dogs, to observe birds.

As he speaks about his fascination for the Greater Painted Snipe, a bird in which the gender roles are starkly reversed, so that it is the female that indulges in courtship displays, courts one mate after another and leaves her eggs to the care of mates.

Chakravarty is afraid that a climate disaster is looming closer, and many species are on borrowed time. “I am not a very optimistic person in this matter. Though I try to project as much optimism as I can through my art and my cartoons because I think I owe it to my readers, especially younger ones, I don’t have much hope left anymore. Ever since I started out, it has just gotten consistently worse year after year,” he says.

Chakravarty is a pioneer in making art exclusively on the environment and climate change, but several artists across forms are now making their voices heard on the issue. He, however, is worried as the days get hotter every year. As an artist, though, he is fighting on.

“I am at a stage where I research hard and put everything I can into a comic or a piece. I put it out there and let viewers decide how to interpret it and apply it to their lives,” he says.