Episode 2: Rohan Chakravarty on cartooning for the earth, the creatures all around, & some enthralling nature facts
For Episode 2 of The Heart Gallery Podcast, Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer talks to nature's cartoonist, Rohan Chakravarty.
Rohan's cartoons about animals, the natural world, and human-environment connections are published as comic strips, books, and educational materials all around the world. He is talented, hilarious, and a critical voice for the voiceless. Listen to be charmed and educated by the inimitable Rohan Chakravarty.
Podcast transcript is available below.
Rohan's HW: "Just take a look at the nearest tree from your window and make a note of what happens on that tree over one or two hours. Whatever time you can devote. I think that would be the best gateway into nature. I don't think you are going to look back after that."
See the work of Rohan’s favorite artists: Genndy Tartakovsky, Gary Larson, Bill Watterson.
Rohan's piece on snake clitorises, his Bird Business book, his Naturalist Ruddy book, and the Green Humour website.
Connect with us @green_humour & @rebekaryvola.
Thank you Samuel Cunningham for podcast editing.
Thank you Cosmo Sheldrake for use of his song Pelicans We.
Podcast art by Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer.
And be sure to read about & view Rohan’s three pivotal pieces below…
3 heart moves with Rohan Chakravarty:
To provide a visual accompaniment to your listening of The Heart Gallery Podcast Episode 2, here are 3 pieces of Rohan’s that are significant to his life, perspectives, and career:
#1: The Wildlife Map of India, 2015.
“I’m a big fan of geography and a big fan of maps. I’ve always wanted to draw maps that bring out the link between landscape and biodiversity. Such maps have not really existed in the past. This is the kind of stuff I wanted to look at growing up. It took me aa good deal of research to get to the point where I was confident enough to execute this project, and it’s a project that I did purely for myself. It took me a whole year of speaking to scientists, validating all the information I put together, and eventually drawing together wildlife from all four corners of the country. When you hear “wildlife of India”, a layman tends to conjure the image of tigers, elephants, peacocks, and snakes. But there is so so so much more. There are Snow Leopards in the northern hills of our country, there are Blue Whales in the Indian Ocean, in the East you have hornbills, in the West you have Flamingos, wild asses, and whatnot. I think it’s one of the most biodiverse countries in the world. And that’s something I really wanted people to be proud of, to understand in one quick visual glance. And that’s what the map has been doing over the years: I think it’s in every Indian state. It’s in schools, in libraries. Slowly it is doing what I hoped it would do.”
#2: Comic on the Draft Environmental Impact Assessment, 2020.
“This one’s from a very political context, from when the Draft Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was being passed here in India. The current government wanted to scrap a lot of the EIA rules and regulations that applied to industries and businesses and make it far easier for these entities to access natural spaces. This was happening bang in the middle of the pandemic, when people were not able to go out to protest. A lot of the protest was online, along with the debate and conversation. In order for people to respond to this level of policy something drastic had to be done. There were two lawyers that really helped me break down what the EIA was really about, what the bureaucratic language really meant. I drew a comic about it, directed at the Environment Ministry of India. Over time it became one of the faces of the online movement against the policy. Eventually it played a part in garnering the 6 lacked signatures that pushed the government on the back foot. This reaffirmed my belief in this art form, that it’s more than just funny pictures.”
#3: Naturalist Ruddy, 2022.
“I’ve just had a blast working on this book. By the time I had conjured this idea there was so much politics and a certain ugliness in my work that I wanted to dissociate with. I was feeling hopeless, people were taking me down for certain opinions, trolls, so much criticism for the political side of my work… I wanted to do something new, from scratch, which I hadn’t done in a while. I wanted to learn, unlearn, relearn. This book was so much fun to make. I’ve never read detective fiction in my life. In fact, I had run away from it - I do not really enjoy reading fiction. But to do this project I had to read the genre, and I read some of the classics including Sherlock Holmes, Feluda. I read these for the first time in the 34th year of my life. Thinking not like a cartoonist but rather like a detective was such a good break, such a good departure from what I normally I do. I’m so glad it’s been received so well, it’s won a couple literary awards, and I hope people continue to enjoy Ruddy.”
Podcast transcript:
Note: Transcripts are generated in collaboration with Youtube video captioning and ChatGP3 and are not extensively edited.
[Music]
Hello and welcome back to The Heart Gallery Podcast, with me, Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer.
I created this podcast to inquire into the various roles that art can play in helping us create deeper connections with our environment and others - both human and more-than-human.
I have worked as an artist, creative advisor, and visual communicator in the climate and humanitarian space for over a decade, and also have a personal art practice where I explore relationships between individuals, other living beings, and our earth. Listen to hear from other artists engaging in these interrelationships with all kinds of approaches, philosophies, and hopes for the future of humanity and our planet, and learn about different ways that art can help create change.
This week I talk to Rohan Chukravarty. Rohan is a cartoonist and illustrator coming from Nagpur, India, the 'Tiger Capital of the World'. Described, accurately, by Actor and Producer Dia Mirza as “gifted with the ability to convey hard truths about science and people, with a skill that is rare and unique”, while journalist Faye de Souza has said that she has yet to come across a more talented and effective advocate for Mother Earth and her voiceless children”. In a comment on one of Rohan’s books on Goodreads, Ashu22 said that Rohan’s “cartoons make them remember a line by Gandhi, that, "In a gentle way, you can shake the world".
In 2013 his “Green Humour'' cartoon series was scouted by GoComics making Rohan the first Indian cartoonist to be picked up by a global comics distributor and he has illustrated and cartooned for publications and campaigns from World wildlife fund, National Geographic, Save our Seas Foundation, forest departments all across India, and within the Red Cross Red Crescent movement. He has written and illustrated 6 books about animal behavior, relationships between human, non human creatures, our planet, and was awarded the first prize by the United Nations Development Programme and the French government for his illustrations highlighting the impact of climate change on India's Sundarbans. He has also received awards from Sanctuary Asia, Publishing Next and the Green Literature Festival.
In this episode of The Heart Gallery Podcast we talk about a memorable encounter with a beautiful tigress, the power of humor, and how the impact of art can be measured. Finally, Rohan shares how we can all connect more deeply with our surroundings right this second.
Please note that although this is not the first Heart Gallery episode I am sharing, it is the first one that I recorded, and I learned some critical things about the recording equipment afterwards. Definitely a case of the first pancake syndrome. I hope you can overlook any sound quality issues on my side by focusing on Rohan’s stories :-)
[Music]
RRdK: Hello Rohan, welcome to the podcast! Before I ask you any questions I wanted to give a tiny little story about how I learned about your existence in the world. This is during the pandemic… I was spending probably too much time on Instagram and a friend of mine from grad school - her name's Sonali - she posted an interview with you that I clicked on… It had cartooning and environment or nature in the title and I don't know if you recall but you were talking about the Mumbai biodiversity map.
RC: That's right yes.
RRdK: At that moment I enjoy the interview, I was proud of Sonali, I thought this is so cool. I ended up going on your Instagram page and looking through all of your cartoons. I spent a good amount of time going through your materials and at that point I don't think I had ever seen cartoons utilized for environmental communication (maybe I had but it had just never really like clicked). I hadn't really connected the dots that that could be a form of communication that could work for the environment.
So fast forward to like a week later and I'm having a conversation with one of my collaborators at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center where I have worked as an artist and creative person of sorts for many years. My creative collaborator is wanting to start this thing called cartoon-a-thons and he's connected with a whole bunch of New Yorker cartoonists, these elite, typically American cartoonists, and his idea is that we're going to get cartoonists together and we're going to bring them into the climate and humanitarian policy space where they're going to listen to these like very jargon-y conversations and they're going to be drawing cartoons at the same time.
Because he's so kind and inviting he invited me to come be a cartoonist. I'm not a cartoonist at all but I know this subject matter a little bit having been in this world for a long time. He was looking for other cartoonists to join as well, we never want to have things be like so American-centric, and he was casting a wide net and he asked if any of us knew any cartoonists. I said I know one (I didn't know you of course)! I can't remember how I connected with you or who connected with you, but we brought you in and you have been doing some cartoon-a-thons with the Red Cross ever since!
So to summarize my introduction here, Rohan came on board to do some cartoon-a-thons, it was great, we bonded over the fact that we have both adopted Indian Street dogs: I have a Delhi from New Delhi who is an elderly gentleman at this point, and Rohan has two lovely ladies Srishti & Sakshi.
RC: Correct, Srishti and Sakshi, that's right.
RRdK: How old are they, Rohan?
RC: They turned four this November
RRdK: oh they turned four, so you found them as puppies yeah yeah I found those puppies right outside my house and I just got them in, and they've been with me since. Yeah, Rebeka I must thank you for making the introduction and referring me to the inception of cartoon-a-thons, because I've been having a blast doing them. I think uh some of them have also led to very important engagements with events like COP 26, COP 27 where I've been able to display my work and draw live for those events. So thanks, and it really means a lot to me that it's come from an artist like you whose work I've really admired for as long as I've known you. It's been an absolute blast collaborating with you.
You've said that you you're not a cartoonist but I disagree. I think whenever you've stepped in to draw cartoons you've made a difference and you've really added another dimension to the art form because uh I would call you a very unconventional cartoonist. You do not uh assert by convention and I think uh the kind of stuff that you do - especially the illustrating over images - I think that's really underrated and very underutilized art form. I think it has tremendous potential in publishing and conveying ideas so what you're doing with that particular art form I think i probably one of the best in the world I've seen. So thank you for having me here and it really means a lot that I'm having this conversation with you.
RRdK: oh dear, you're so kind. I have to work on accepting compliments, I appreciate that. I feel like you are trying to butter me up so I don't ask you like the deeper philosophical questions.
RC: Absolutely not.
RRdK: Okay so I did some research on you… I listened to some interviews, read some things that are available on the internet, and I have to say that your background like what I've pieced together it's very intriguing. There's some romance along the path of Rohan becoming Rohan of Green Humour (which is this umbrella, I believe this is your umbrella for all of the environmental, nature, animal-based art communication that you do). So let me just share that I found out about this very lovely naturalist grandfather figure…
RC: That's right.
RRdK: I also - so I'm just gonna throw a few out there - there was also you growing up in Nagpur (I hope I'm saying that right), the 13th largest city in India, but the leading Indian city for greening, livability, health care, and transportation, apparently. So you grew up in a city that sounds wonderful in a lot of ways - you can correct me if I'm wrong - and you got into bird watching in this city correct ?
RC: That's correct. I'm surprised how much more about my hometown than I do!
RRdK: this is Wikipedia. Then there is a Dentistry thread hat I found! So here we have naturalist Grandpa who spent a lot of your childhood telling you intriguing facts about the natural world around you, inviting you to connect to different creatures all around you that many people maybe don't notice, oh and then I almost forgot then you had a really special encounter with a tiger at some point. Can you walk us through… can you connect these thoughts and explain?
RC: So you've thrown in a lot of these jigsaw pieces and I'm supposed to put them together, all right let's do this. So yeah my interaction with nature began, yes, with my grandfather. I was probably three or four years as well back then my grandfather (who's my mother's father) - he was from a hunting family and he was very enthusiastic about about my life and even though we didn't have much Wildlife immediately in our vicinity he would take us (me and my brother ) to visit the city zoo and just, , chat about animals. He would gift us encyclopedias, too, so both my brother and I knew about creatures like the ocelot and the mata mata at a very young age. Kids around us would just wonder what the hell we are talking about.
So it was a good introduction to Nature through him, but along the way I lost track, I lost that connection that he had so painstakingly formed in both of us. And for a very long time my interest in nature of wildlife remained very dormant. Then it was parked into action when, as an adult, actually I must have been 18 years, I saw this tigress that you read about. This was my first wild tiger sighting. It happened in a place called Nagzira-Navegaon Tiger Reserve. It’s about 100 kilometers from my hometown, Nagpur. Nagpur, very interestingly is also called The Tiger capital of the world because it's got the largest number of tigers around 200 kilometer radius for any city in the world, and yeah, Rebeka, if you ever want to see tigers, my hometown is the place to be, so be my guest.
So this is where I saw the tigress and that brought out something in me. , that magical feeling, it does something to you, and then you don't realize until, , the next thing you're a cartoonist drawing wild animals. So that's pretty much how it worked.
That was the inception of my series. I was drawing cartoons for a very long time and I was also interested in wildlife for a very long time but my art wasn't really finding its feet. I was dabbling with all kinds of topics, trying to draw politicians, trying to draw celebrities and failing miserably at everything I did. So when I saw the tigress and I saw started reading up more, and understanding more about wildlife … about the issues that concern wildlife both in my country and around the world… I started to notice that there's not much creative communication happening around these issues.
This was a long time back 2005 was when I saw the tigress. 2010 was when I started out professionally drawing these cartoons that you see today. Back then there wasn't much creative communication happening so I thought, somebody like me who knows how to draw, who knows how to crack a joke here and there, and present information in a rather interesting manner should take up the responsibility of trying to communicate these issues humorously and responsibly. That's how one thing led to another and now you see what has become green humor over the years.
RRdK: Fascinating… So there's three threads here that I'm picking up. There's the fact that you were drawn to humor so like that was maybe like a part of your identity or something… and then there was the tiger connection… and then you were trying to figure out out how to exercise this artistic ability that you had. So at this time you were training to be a dentist, correct, and you were also drawing on the side? Or how was that working?
RC: Well no, uh as a teenager, I didn't really think much about what I want to be and it was just something at the back of my mind. I just didn't question what I was getting into because everyone else was doing it. I thought it was the right thing to do and I think that's how a lot of people in my hometown specifically, and in India generally, pick their careers. There isn't much information about the creative fields of uh the arts and culture even today.
Even though there is a lot of growing awareness, even though I am surrounded by people who do a lot of cool things, the general awareness that the arts can be a viable career option is certainly not there especially not in small towns like mine. So I just uh happened to join the rat race, and because all my friends were getting into medicine or engineering or law or because I hated mathematics, I thought that medicine may just be the right thing for me. but yeah the moment I witnessed my first tooth extraction that was the moment when I decided that, okay this cannot be my career in the future. It simply cannot be.
RRdK: Wait that's so scary. So you witnessed this tooth extraction, which sounds awful, yeah I have no desire to witness such a thing, or to go through it obviously, but at this point that sounds like a potentially desperate moment. Like if this is the path you've been on what was the feeling that you're going through at that point? Were you like, “oh I'm gonna be an artist now” or -
RC: Well I struggled a lot to make sense of it because it was too late for me by then. I had to finish the course. It's an expensive course to get into. And yeah I think that moment made me realize that even if I'm going to be a dentist I may not be associated with the clinical aspects of the job. See, it's a noble profession, I don't mean any offense against it, but it's simply not for me to , wake up on a fine winter morning and peep into a rotten mouth the next thing. So I felt that I needed to pull up my socks and figure out how exactly I can, , make an escape out of this.
So I started to hone my cartooning as much as I could back then. I think I picked up a real interest for animation I was always interested in animation because I had grown up watching a lot of the great classics: Hanna-Barbera, Genndy Tartakovsky, and their work really had a profound influence on me.
So by my third year of Dentistry I decided that I wanted to be an animator and I was training myself by attending tutorials online, watching a lot of these uh YouTube courses, even buying a lot of books. , devouring them. So by the time I had finished my Dentistry course, without flunking thankfully, I started training seriously for a career in animation.
Within a year of completing my course I did get a job at a film studio in Bangalore in South India. I worked that job for a good four years before that also got a little mundane, because we were only doing commercials for corporate projects and products.
That's when, as late as 2014, I decided to take the plunge into cartooning. I quit animation and in 2014 I became a full-time cartoonist. It's just been a very meandering journey.
RRdK: It's been a meandering journey, and the humor piece - so it seems like that was the point where you managed to connect the art like your art proclivities and art creating desires with humor?
Do you feel like you always identified as like a funny person or like a sardonic person?
RC: absolutely not. No my wife is going to vouch for this, I'm a really boring person. I'm really boring to talk to in-person or to be with. Probably my brother will also vouch for this. I don't think I'm a funny person at all, if you meet me maybe you'll vouch for this as well. It's just easier speaking to you online.
I think I've always been this caveman, and I think humor is my escape from being awkward socially. So it's just a tool and I think I draw humor or write humor better than I speak humor. So yeah I don't think I identify as a funny person, but if my cartoons are making a smile or giggle maybe I'm doing my job right.
RRdK: yeah that's intriguing. I saw a quote recently, I shouldn't even be quoting it because I don't remember where it was or who said it, but it was about how some of the funniest people that we know or that we know in the public eye, like Robin Williams was this as an example, that these are some of the people that have the most inner turmoil oftentimes. Not saying you have inner turmoil, but that that funniness or humor can oftentimes be that outlet - maybe that's what you're getting at.
RC: Robin Williams was a genius. He could crack jokes instantly, he could pull them out of his hat. I don't think I can do that.
RRdK: Humour is like maybe a way of of changing the environment around you… if you feel like you're not very entertained by your surroundings, it's a way of creating some kind of shift potentially. Maybe that brings me to another question then: so you are managing to create - I guess humor is broad right, it's not just funny what you're creating. It's illuminating, it can be sad, it can be devastating, it can … I mean there's so much depth to your work. What I'm wondering is what you're trying to do, if anything, like are you trying to spark intrigue? Are you trying to create feelings of care? Of maybe even love between people and their surroundings and their animal neighbors? Or are you just trying to potentially raise awareness? Or how do you see what it is that you're doing?
RC: I don't really have a specific or a technical answer to this, and I think the purpose or the motive of why I do what I do has also been evolving considerably since the day I started. When I started out I can safely admit that it was just to amuse myself and for my own creative satisfaction. I was drawing for a large part just for myself, but over time I realized that there is some spark in this medium of communication, because there have been some tangible impacts of my work being useful for people and changing the way they think… changing the way they interact with their environment. So I think that's when this realization dawned upon me.
When I started to get published in newspapers, especially the Sunday format, which allows longer narratives & wider spaces, that's when I started to take complex issues and break them down into simple ideas by means of comic strips.
That's when my readers, beyond the circles of wildlife and science really started to connect with me, and that's when, in a way, a lot of this communication around environment, conservation around things like the politics of environmental conservation started to get mainstream because of the comics I was drawing in the newspapers.
That's when I realized that I do have a responsibility coming from a country like India where there is extreme polarization of opinion and the ground realities of conservation or managing the environment or natural resources is very different from what the media portrays, or what reaches people by means of newspapers or social media. I think for a communicator like me who knows a bit of science and ecology and can also portray that stuff to a person who does not have any connection with… That became a sense of responsibility that I also try to manage or balance with the humor side of things, the satire side of things, and the brevity as well - cartooning comes with a lot of brevity. You cannot write an entire essay or an article in the cartoon and that's both an advantage and a disadvantage for the artists.
So speaking of the sense of responsibility that came with cartooning that was something I realized midway down my journey, and that's become a very integral part of the way I approach my themes and my subjects.
RRdK: I'm so interested in this, and well, first of all it's so incredible that you have managed to get cartoons about nature, animals, the environment, and human connection to their environment into newspapers in India - and really big newspapers from what I can tell. That in itself is incredible. Also fantastic that you've managed to sustain that and that you have sparked an interest and wonder.
I wanted to ask you about your theory of change, whether there was a manifesto of sorts that you work and live by. I wonder, thinking back to your tiger encounter, I'm wondering whether you think that your cartoons could potentially create an avenue, a space, for someone to take notice - not not necessarily of a tiger, because tigers are not really typically so close to people - but of maybe birds or other creatures that are around?
Are you trying to create a portal for increased awareness a portal to the natural world that like many people maybe just don't notice in their in their day-to-day?
RC: Absolutely. So one of the reasons why I do this is because I have a big problem with the way people can assume information and news about science, and even the way the media portrays issues concerning science.
I always give this example to people who listen to my talk: I present three sets of entities and I ask them to identify them. The first set is usually a Bollywood actor or an actress, or let's say more recently the image of Will Smith punching Chris Rock from the Oscars, and then there's an image of the Indian prime minister or maybe Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and the third image is a species of dragonfly. Now everybody is able to identify the first two sets but they cannot tell me what species of dragonfly it is that I'm talking about. I'm usually talking about the Ground Skimmer, which is the most common dragonfly species around where I live. The irony of this reality is that our lives do not directly revolve around Will Smith's or Joe Biden's, our lives directly around the dragonfly’s, because a dragonfly eats mosquitoes and i's responsible for saving us from diseases. And yet we know so little about that creature.
That is my problem with the way information and news about science is presented and consumed. That's something I'm trying to change with my work one step at a time, one cartoon at a time, one visual at a time.
So a large part of why I try to anthropomorphize my subjects and to make them relevant in a way, or to make them make the reader empathetic to them in a way, is because I feel that they have important stories to tell which have never come up. and which nobody else bothers about. Which I want to be a part of mainstream communication.
RRdK: I appreciate that so much. One piece of information I encountered a few years ago about a children's encyclopedia, I don't remember the specific name, it's an encyclopedia that comes out, it has elements of the world that are interesting to children… The News piece was about how in their next edition they were choosing to take out some entries that were focused on nature. There were some bird species they were taking out, there were some tree species, I don't remember what else there was, but the sad part was that they were saying that these entries were just becoming less relevant to children. They were replacing them with probably - I don't remember what they were replacing them with - it was probably some technological additions.
That was just really awful to learn about. I really appreciate what you said about the dragonflies.
Beyond the dragonflies being useful, I think that you also find more than just this utilitarian appeal to creatures right? That you're trying to communicate in your work that we should or we could be taking notice, that there is a power in taking notice of our surroundings, in our animal neighbors (and non-animal neighbors)
RC: Oh absolutely for other reasons too right, absolutely. I mean the dragonfly is one of the fastest creatures on the wing for its size. It's got so many flight powers that other creatures do not possess. In fact a lot of aircraft design aerial warfare has been inspired by dragonfly, so it's not just their utility that appeals to me it's just the intrinsic genius of their design. And it's not just a dragon fly - so many other creatures I find it very appalling.
I take kids out on nature trails sometimes, on bird watching trails, and they can tell me what car passed by, what exact model of car passed by, but they cannot tell me what tree they are looking at. That is really bothersome.
RRdK: oh so much. The teenagers I know can tell me so much about rap artists and clothing brands, but don't know the first thing about the trees around either. I hope that we can figure out how to change that.
RC: by the way I'm not great with trees either. I'm learning -
RRdK: I mean at least you're learning haha. That makes me think of your first book that I encountered which was Bird Business.
It's an impressive book, I think it's over 100 pages, and it details birds of India. It's just shocking the level of detail that you manage to include in there not only the level of detail about these bird species, but also just the level of detail of the artwork. It just looks like an incredible amount of work. This is a little bit of a departure for a second, but can you just share like what your process is in creating? Not the newspaper cartoons, but you've written a number of books, and how do you manage to find all that information?
RC: Bird Business is a very special book to me because it's very close to my heart. The journey was four years long. It was an awfully challenging book to make because it has a lot of science. Every bit of that science I had to verify before I could illustrate it. Because a lot of things about birds I've learned on the go, I've learned observing birds and a lot of it is not really validated by science. For example there is a sequence of this hawk called a Shikra hunting a bat. This hawk usually preys on birds, but I have seen it hunting bats around my vicinity regularly, so there are these slight inconsistencies in my observations as opposed to what has been portrayed by science.
So it also breaks the mold with respect to what we know about a certain species from literature and what I have observed and what a few others have observed and validated by writing papers on it. So it was a correlation of all kinds of data from papers, from books published before, from magazines, and putting it all together in the form of illustrated sequences that depict the behavior of birds.
Now what's happening in India is that there's been an I.T boom in the country over the last 20 years. A lot of people have dispensable incomes, and they've taken up hobbies like bird watching, they've taken up hobbies like wildlife photography. But beyond identifying a certain species they do not tend to know what exactly this bird is up to, what it's doing with its the resources around it, how it is interacting with its environment. Frankly, there is not much literature around Indian species of wild animals either so that's where I wanted to fill in the gap. That's where I want to come in and depict in a very interesting and a very concise manner how birds respond and react with their environment, and where exactly they fit in the whole web of life. That's what the book is about.
RRdK: It's such a beautiful accomplishment and obviously very impressive. You're reminding me why I asked the question: that was that that you're creating not just for these newspapers - primarily grown-up audiences - but you're also creating for kids and you are filling this gap where we are seeing - like that children's encyclopedia that I mentioned - we are seeing this growing gap you are filling that in some way. I feel like everyone should read your books and they are beautiful.
RC: Thank you Rebeka.
RRdK: Can you share a little bit about what kind of audience you like communicating with the most? Who do you enjoy communicating with?
RC: I have a very controversial answer to that. I'd say myself. Because that's how I approach my work. I am a very harsh judge of what I draw, and I'm also somebody who I consider has a very low IQ, so when my art helps me grasp things and retain information I think it will work on my readers as well because they're generally smarter than me.
That's the thumb rule I follow. I think if I have communicated to myself effectively through what I've drawn or written I think it works with my reader as well, so I am my go-to reader, my test reader too. I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing to fall back on your own opinion as an artist.
I know it can be devastating for some others, but yeah I think so far it has worked for me. Maybe I might change my approach in future.
RRdK: See, you said that your sense of humor doesn't come out when you're speaking but look at that, look at you, look at the self-deprecation on full display.
I have one more question about the books because I see them as aimed at potentially or maybe appealing to potentially a younger audience than the newspaper work that you do. I know you do other work as well but the books are clearly accessible by children. I mean, I did read some reviews on Goodreads - I don't know if you've been reading your Goodreads reviews?
RC:I have not -
RRdK: There's some reviews - a couple at least - that are like - oh I mean they're all very praiseworthy! They're all just full of praise. They're all your friends! Um haha, no, anyways, but there's there's a couple that point out that there's a little bit of material in the books that is a little bit advanced or inappropriate for children, so maybe that's you communicating to yourself. RC: I take a lot of pride in that kind of thing frankly. I take a lot of pride in that kind of thing because I think [kids] know better than most adults do.
That's one thing I'm also after, Rebeka, because the general notion in India is that cartoons are meant for kids, and that's not true. That's also something I want to change, because the way parents look at animation, the way parents look at picture books or even graphic novels … I didn't think there's a general lack of awareness… in India and the Indian leadership as far as typical middle class families are concerned that anything that has cartoons is meant for kids.
Some of my books - even though they are not exactly meant for kids - have been nominated for awards in the kids category.
Of course I'm not going to say no to any nominations, but I do have an issue with that, because when I approach my subject matter I do not ever have an age group in mind.
The first thing that a publisher asks you is what age are you approaching and I never have an answer to that because that's not how I tell stories. That's not how anybody should tell stories. If you're telling a story, it should be accessible to anybody who wants to read. My job is to make people want to read my stories no matter what age they are.
I've had very funny interactions with parents and their kids who both read my work: For example, my latest book Naturalist Ruddy is about a Mongoose who thinks he's a detective. He goes about solving various crime scenes in nature.
When he solves these crime scenes, the reader gets intimate with the workings of the natural world. That's how we all have fun learning more about nature. So a lot of parents bought this book assuming that it is for kids, for a very youngish audience, and there are scenes of uh animals making love animals, doing all kinds of things that animals do, animals murdering each other in very graphic ways, which actually happens in nature.
There have been words like copulation, which kids have failed to understand, and then they have to ask their parents. Then at live interactions between parents and me and their kids they've thrown these kind of questions at me and I just throw them back at the parents saying that, “your parents know about copulation!”, and, “that's how you've come into the world!”, so, “why don't you ask them?!”.
So there have been all kinds of funny interactions over books with kids and their parents just simply because people do not seem to understand that literature should not really be looked at from an age lens.
RRdK: No I feel like you're addressing something that is so real and people only need to reflect on their own experiences as children I realize that like as you're speaking, I mean you're so right. I know a little bit about the children's publishing industry - I hope to write children's books one day, so I've learned some things up from podcasts, from some conferences -
RC: I can't wait for that, I think the style of your illustrations is going to be so conducive and so suitable to that kind of work. And I really hope that you will write the books you will illustrate!
RRdK: My husband, he's a really fantastic storyteller, so we’ve been working on a couple of projects, and I think we're just going to publish them by ourselves.
RC: I can't wait for this.
RRdK: you'll be the first to know. But you're making me realize that the best books, the ones that I enjoyed as a child, are ones that I still enjoy to this day, and what I wanted to say about the children's publishing industry - at least at least how it is here in North America and maybe maybe Europe - is that they're obsessed with figuring out the age group [of a book], and then they're even more obsessed with the appropriateness of the content.
I was with some friends last weekend, and we were there was a baby amongst us. We were reading this old vintage children's book, I can't remember the author, but there was a naked man with like with everything hanging out in this children's book, and my friend Taylor was like, “oh when I was little that was my favorite book! I just wanted to see this book because I wanted to see the naked man”. I mean calling Taylor out here.
Like, Roald Dahl: apparently he was not a very kind person, but his books are like so dark and weird. I remember as a child loving how the children would like be abducted and murdered and in these like most grotesque ways.
There was this one child in The Witches… the child was not murdered, but they were turned into a dolphin and it was kind of gruesome. But I remember thinking it was so beautiful and intriguing. This other child got abducted and had to live inside a painting and it also kind of gruesome. Kids loved that stuff.
So you're right. I guess we all have an inner child too and maybe if you are creating for yourself maybe you're also communicating with little Rohan in some way, what do you think?
RC: Oh absolutely yeah, and I really have to mention Maurice Sendak here - I think that was a person who drew for himself. And by just the simple act of entertaining himself he could entertain the world, and the world found so much meaning in his work.
RRdK: Yeah I appreciate that a lot. One last question before I switch gears a little bit: I'm wondering how you deal with intangibility of art communication? I don't think your impact is completely intangible because what I see online there are really fantastic reviews about your books… People saying like, “oh I'm so glad I picked up this book because all of a sudden I understand so much more about the birds in my neighborhood” or about these really grotesque insect relationships. I feel like that in itself is a tangible impact. I know you have a lot of stories like this of people sharing with you how you have changed their outlook, but there is always a little bit of intangibility because there's something indirect… And you and I have worked together in this policy space, with people who are actually like able to, theoretically, create policies hopefully to change the world (whether they do or not, that's a different discussion), but how do you deal with that intangibility?
RC: No, you're so right, Rebeka, we have worked with people who are predisposed better than us to make a difference. The last two COPs I attended, virtual interactions - in the entire course of these events the word biodiversity was uttered only once. I find that really horrifying because everything is so interconnected and if these people cannot see that we are really headed towards doom.
So you're right that just being an artist comes with a lot of intangibility. You cannot always measure the kind of impact that you're having, but I think I've had a lot of very frank and very candid interactions with my readers by means of email or even social media, wherein I have come to know that at least some of my pieces, if not many, or if not all have, had impacts that can be said to be tangible.
For example, this is a very old example that happened in 2015, but I remember it fondly because there was this man from Peru who wrote to me saying that he read my comic about marmosets. Marmosets are these tiny monkeys in the Amazon and they are captured illegally for the pet trade. This person who read my work was on his way to buying one and he refrained from doing so after reading my comics. That's one place I can claim that my comic actually saved the life of a wild animal.
I know it's not much, but I'm really proud of this and there have been several other examples. There was this comic about eco-friendly Sanitary products available in India and a lot of women wrote to me saying that that comic helped them make the switch. I'm a man, I know nothing about menstruation, and to get that kind of a feedback from female readers means means the world to me, because that was some kind of an initiation for at least a handful of people.
There was also this comic about seashells - now seashells, very interestingly, offer secondary habitats to a lot of creatures that we are not familiar with like squids, various kinds of crabs. A lot of people who collect seashells don't know that, and when I had pointed that out in a comic strip a lot of people actually stopped collecting seashells actively and started to spread the message.
I won't call these impacts intangible simply because they cannot be measured by statistics. I think if they've impacted a person's mind enough to change his or her ways of looking at the world, I think that's tangible enough.
RRdK: I have to agree with you on that, and I'm so glad that those those testimonials reached you. You can only imagine that there's probably so many more ways that you've touched children or grown-ups. Maybe people who just don't think that they can reach out to you and connect with you.
So that's very cool and I would also say that you probably know more about menstruation than you're letting on. I have to put you on the spot: can you give us any kind of animal menstruation fact?
RC: Thank you. Wow I can't recall any menstruation fact as such, but I also tell you something interesting. The presence of clitorises has recently been discovered in snakes and that is quite fascinating. It seemingly serves no other purpose than sexual pleasure in a reptile - that was unknown - and it was probably because male scientists were simply not bothered about finding out the stuff. Now it's finally been uncovered by a couple of women in Australia who've been working on all kinds of snakes. I've drawn a comic about it as well.
RRdK: oh that's so fascinating, thank you for that fact!
To switch gears from snakes to birds, I read online (I don't know if this is still true) that you have a really impressive e-bird streak? Can you can you tell us about what your current eBird streak is, and can you explain what that is as well?
RC: eBird is a citizen science app for bird watchers and enthusiasts who can record observations of whatever birds they are watching, listening to, or photographing around them.
I'm a rather obsessive bird watcher. I keep a track of what species I am encountering every day. I make daily checklists of birds. It's just my way of interacting with my environment and having fun with it.
So there's this unofficial contest on eBird going on which is about how many days continuously you can record a bird checklist without taking a break. I think I've done about 2100 days so far. I hope to win this contest whenever the winner gets declared. I hope I'll get a pair of binoculars or something, but I don't know what the prize is. Yeah I just do it for the fun of it, and I think uh it's a nice way to keep a record.
On citizen science platforms like eBird all this data is gathered and analyzed by scientists and a lot of the science we know about things like migration, what kinds of birds visit what kinds of habitats around us, all of that is changing over the years because a lot of citizens have been contributing new science to these platforms.
RRdK: So do you encourage people to to look into eBird if they don't know about it yet?
RC: Oh absolutely. I think it's the best connection a layman can have with science.
RRdK: I'm curious… it's night time right now in India, in Nagpur where you are: can you tell us what birds you observed today?
RC: Oh sure. There's this bird called the Magpie Robin - it's a black and white songbird. A very pretty bird that comes. I have a small water bowl right outside my balcony and it comes for a bath every evening. I've got these sparrow boxes in which house sparrows have been nesting. I think for the last seven years of having these boxes up I've hosted at least 100 sparrows from various groups. There's so many others.
There's this neem tree right outside my house and on a good cold morning you can observe up to 20-22 species on that one single tree so yeah, it's quite a fair bit of biodiversity right around my house, fortunately.
RRdK: That's beautiful, and I love the idea that there's almost this gamification potential to entice people into looking out their window and trying to see who their neighbors might be. I heard you say somewhere else that not only do you have these relationships with your bird neighbors and your two wonderful adopted dog children from the streets but I also saw during the pandemic you had shared some interviews somewhere about how you had been noticing insects around?
I'm curious if you can share about any other animal relationships that you might currently have?
RC: oh there's so many. So yeah the pandemic was actually what prompted me to explore beyond birds and mammals. I had no idea that so much biodiversity existed inside my house. Without even stepping out of my house I could record so many other creatures that I previously didn't know existed, simply because I wasn't looking.
I'm used to traveling to chase exotic birds, all kinds of big game, but when the pandemic happened, when the lockdowns happened, I could not do that. Even to gather my ideas to draw cartoons about animals I need to do a fair bit of traveling. I need to do a fair bit of exploration myself and because all that just seemed to happen I was left with a crisis. I didn't know what to draw about or what new ideas to convey to my readers or even to myself.
That's when I started noticing beetles and flies of various colors. I had no real answers to what these creatures were, what exactly they were doing, how exactly they were going about their lives. So these things presented themselves as little mysteries to me a case that a detective takes up. That was the idea that eventually sparked the series Naturalist Ruddy, because it's all about these little creatures, the critters that we don't really know about. It's not about lions and tigers, it's not about glamorous birds. It is about these unglamorous tiny creatures that just escape our attention.
I think that one of the most fascinating relationships between me and nature I have been able to unearth in this whole exploration is that of the jumping spider in my kitchen. It's a tiny
creature the size of smaller than my finger. I've been observing it hunting fruit flies. Fruit flies lay eggs on fruits and food items and so this spider is helping me keep my food from rotting. I didn't know about it.
I think there's just so much to explore right around yourselves just if you have an open mind and open eye.
RRdK: I love that, Rohan. I'm assuming from what you're sharing is that you are against the killing of insects that are found in the house and spiders, is that correct?
RC: oh no absolutely not, I don't think. I actually I have eaten insects and I've quite loved fried locusts. There's this Chutney that certain tribes in the central region of India make using ants
and chilies, and I think it's one of the most delicious chutneys I've ever eaten.
So I'm not of the opinion that what you love and respect cannot be eaten or cannot be killed. Yeah so I disagree
RRdK: Oh that's so unfortunate because I've always been so horrified when people kill spiders in their houses -
RC: Oh yes killing spiders for no reason, yes I'm definitely against it -
RRdK: only for chutney! If you're killing spiders you better be making chutney otherwise-
RC: Actually I don't think spiders are edible. It's the ants that you should be making chutneys out of. Please apply this conversation to your personal lives at your own risk.
RRdK: Well, I know we've been talking for so long and it's your dinner time… I'm wondering, in addition to people noticing the creatures that are around them, whether it's birds or insects or other animals, I've heard you give the piece of advice that irrespective of what your career it is possible to blend conservation with it.
I'm wondering, if I were to ask you to give a piece of advice or an invitation, a task, or homework to our audience, what would it be? Do you have something else you want to share?
RC: Well there's a larger context to what I said. What a lot of nature and management of nature, and the environment comes with a lot of politics in a country like India. I think these two can never be disconnected. That's also one of the areas of communication that my work strives to address: to make people aware of these connections and make people aware that it's not black and white - loving wildlife and trying to protect it is not black and white.
You have to make compromises, you have to make sacrifices in order to make two goals converge. It's quite heartbreaking often for people to have that understanding and to have that realization and I think the better equipped a reader is to access that there are gray areas in a particular journey, the more effective your communication is.
So I think that's a very important part of my work: to try and communicate these gray areas in the course of conservation to laypeople who seem to think that everything is black and white.
That there are heroes and there are villains. So a lot of it is dirty work, a lot of it is very difficult work that conservationists are doing on ground.
A lot of the injustice happening with tribes with indigenous people in the name of development, in the name of even conservation.. a lot of it comes with a very colonial understanding of how conservation works. This is being challenged by a lot of the discourses evolving. Which is why I say that no matter what your careers are conservation can always be a part is because I believe that even the simple act of going out and voting for the most environmentally responsible candidate standing for an election - that can also be environmental consciousness, that can also make you an environmentalist in your own right. It could just be as simple as that.
So that that was me deviating as usual from the question you asked me, but yeah coming back to your homework I would say: just take a look at the nearest tree from your window and make a note of what has been happening to that tree or on that tree in one hour or two hours. Whatever time you can devote. I think that would be the best gateway for you into nature. I don't think you are going to look back after that.
RRdK: That's beautiful, so please do the homework, Rohan will be grading you. As a final question - almost final question - there's one thing that I want to ask everyone who does a podcast and that is to share with three artists or creations that have changed how you understand and engage with the world.
RC: Oh well I'll name three artists who have had the most profound impact on my work and on my journey.
The reason why I am a cartoonist today is Genndy Tartakovsky. He's the creator of Dexter's Lab and Samurai Jack, among other fascinating work he's done, and his shows have had such a tremendous impact on me that as a school child I would simply adapt his storylines into my characters and that's how I learned cartooning. You know, I really owe a lot to this man, he's been my imaginary mentor throughout my career. In fact the book bird business that we were talking about pays tribute to his art style.
If there is any wild chance that Genndy Tartakovsky is listening to this podcast, I would really like to thank him.
The other is Bill Watterson, of course, whose work I discovered much later in life but the moment I did I completely fell in love with it. It's not just me, of course, everybody in the world loves Calvin and Hobbes but when you understand the man behind it, when you understand his ethics and his ideals and the love he had for his art form I think that is when you really start to respect what Calvin and Hobb stood for. All that he did to make the medium of comic strips more interactive, more engaging, just going out and experimenting with that limited eight panel space that is allotted to cartoonist. I think that really changed the world of cartooning for others who followed him and for people like me who looked up to him.
Then there was finally Gary Larson who again I discovered much later in life, but I absolutely adored that he used dark and offensive humor in his cartoons. He would not care about who he's offending, he would just go about telling jokes the way he knew best. I think that's something I try to apply to my work as much as I can despite being from a very sensitive country like India.
RRdK: I can see how that's the case with some of your work and you're making me think I have some homework to do to to look at the work of these three individuals. Although I do remember seeing a lot of Calvin and Hobbes growing up and one thing that you made me remember is that nature exploration features so prominently in this cartoon. It's all about exploring and being outside which I think is so great for young people to have today.
Rohan thank you for these resources and also for the homework, and finally if anyone wants to look up Green humor if they're not already familiar, where can they find you.
RC: oh on my website greenhumour..com. I've just started a newsletter so you could just log into my website under your email address and you'll get my cartoon straight into your email.
I'm also on social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even LinkedIn - which bores me to death, but I have to be on it because all my clients are - just the things you have to do to be an artist today! but yeah, just Google Green Humour and you'll find all the right links.
RRdK: Perfect, lovely, thank you so much for this conversation. Let's all go look at the tree outside our window!
RC: thanks a lot Rebeka, it's been such a pleasure.
RRdK: Thanks Rohan.
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That is it for this episode. Thank you for sharing this space and time with us. If you have any ideas for who I else could converse with here please do get in touch at hello@the-heart-gallery.org . I also welcome any other thoughts about the podcast there, you can also find me @rebekaryvola, and it would be lovely to have your support in the form of podcast subscribing wherever you listen, rating, commenting, and sharing with others.
Thank you also goes to Samuel Cunningham for the podcast editing and to Cosmo Sheldrake for the podcast music. I encourage you to go find the whole song, it’s called Pelicans We. Until next time!
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