“Like a welcome summer rain, humour may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.”
A good laugh makes any interview, or any conversation, better. He who laughs, lasts. A sense of humour is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done.
That last one came courtesy of that noted comedian Dwight D. Eisenhower, and it’s hard to argue with someone who got as much done as Eisenhower did.
But climate change? The environment? Species extinction?
Is climate change too hot to handle?
Humour is a sense of intellectual perspective, an awareness that some things are really important, others not, and that the two kinds are oddly jumbled in everyday affairs, the poet Christopher Morley said.
Cartoonist and illustrator Rohan Chakravarty came by his work for the website GreenHumour.com honestly, then. Thoughts about climate change consume his every waking moment, but the importance of being earnest seems less important somehow if not everyone gets the message. Even the most ardent and committed climate crusader could use a light moment on occasion, and Chakravarty had just the tonic: Cartoons that make you laugh and think at the same time.
And so, the idea for GreenHumour was born.
“Every child is born an artist and I was no exception,” Chakravarty explains. “Cartooning was always my chosen means of expression, but little did I think of it as a career.”
Chakravarty hailed from Nagpur in the central Indian state of Maharashtra, a region noted for its wildlife. His relationship with nature — he calls it his “wild tryst” — began as a volunteer with the Sanctuary Nature Foundation’s Kids for Tigers programme in Nagpur, where he led nature walks for children. He derived little pleasure from drawing cartoons about life’s random miscellanies and vicissitudes but when he started to focus on wildlife, a light went on.
“I felt a spark igniting from within. Something connected with me deep down. A certain magic happened and I was finally beginning to find a flow. The fact that (these) cartoons featured an angle of awareness was an added advantage.
“Most of my artwork in school focused on adapting my favourite cartoon characters into my own stories, and I filled notebook after notebook with comics.
“My first serious cartoon on wildlife was on tiger conservation that appeared in Sanctuary Asia way back in 2009.
“I have always connected better with animals than I have with human beings. I think I understand animals better than I understand most people I know . . . and to make your first love your muse is only natural for an artist.
“Most cartoonists draw on politics and social issues, and I consciously avoided taking that route. Politicians generally make rather ugly subjects and my eyes are quite sensitive to beauty, so animals were always my first choice — not that I do not enjoy drawing ugly animals like the blobfish!”
Two years ago, according to Smithsonian magazine, the blobfish was voted the earth's most hideous species in an online poll conducted by the UK-based Ugly Animal Preservation Society.
“I had always wondered why, despite their glamour and allure, wild animals have never been on the front page of any newspaper, so cartoons became my attempt at popularizing wildlife and emphasizing conservation issues.”
And so followed, among others, a cartoon series about the helmeted hornbill (for IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature) with its “funky spiky hairdo, despite having to wear a helmet all the time;” the Darwin fox, aka Darwin’s Zorro, an endangered canid endemic to Chile and subject of the cartoon ‘The Legend of Darwin’s Zorro;’ the jaguar’s uses of its rosettes (“camouflage, individual identification — and apex predator style statement”); ocean acidification and how the dungeness crab lost his shell; the Himalayan griffon vulture’s wingspan (“about as wide as the difference between patriotism for a political party and patriotism for a nation”); and the brahminy starling, before and after its morning cup of coffee.
The ideas may be original and the work inspired, but that doesn’t mean making people laugh for a living is easy, even with climate change so much in the news these days.
“Although cartooning is the most enjoyable activity I have ever known, making a living out of it isn’t exactly a cakewalk, specially in India,” Chakravarty explains. “The fact that I’m hopelessly obsessed with my work has helped me keep discipline in my schedule, and the expansion of the web has helped by resulting in more avenues for cartoonists to supplement their income.”
Chakravarty is doing his part to help the planet, though, and that has its compensations.
Itʼs hard to see even a glimmer of hope behind the mushrooming cloud of depressing facts, so it may be time to make the facts a little less depressing. Humour fits the bill — or hornbill, if you prefer. Perhaps one day Jim Carrey will play Rohan Chakravarty in the movie.
©Rohan Chaklravarty. Originally published on RoundGlass Sustain