Sketching a Brighter Future

Illustrated by the talented Rohan Chakravarty, The Great Indian Nature Trail! With Uncle Bikky is a charming journey through 16 of India’s rich ecological landscapes—from the home of the snow leopard in Ladakh to the hornbill habitat of Arunachal’s Pakke Tiger Reserve.

The first comic book from WWF-India, it joins a growing number of Indian wildlife books for children (as well as other kids’ books with social messages), a welcome trend.

The quirky bird expert, Uncle Bikky, his intrepid niece Chunmun and their loveable bear-like dog Duggu ensure that the lessons provided in Bijal Vachharajani’s text go down easily. But Chakravarty is undisputedly the star of the show.

Creator of the hugely popular Green Humour (www.greenhumour.com) column and website, the young dentist-turnedcartoonist’s work is as witty as it is incisive and informative. The drawing is clean and uncluttered and yet full of sharp observations and important detail. All this and more is visible in this new book too. The features of the animal are emphasised effectively, the angles and perspectives used offer a 3D view of their world and a very thoughtful use of colour and tone evokes the mood of the landscape just right—the story of the desert is brown and yellow, many greens undergrid the grasslands from Dudhwa in Uttar Pradesh and a story of night (wild)life in the city is domineeringly grey.

Inexplicably, however, a surfeit of text clutters out the drawings and spoils the visual experience.

Each of Chakravarty’s frames has the capacity to make the reader pause, explore and wonder, but they are so stuffed with words that one wants to quickly move on. The solution is simple: more pages or, perhaps, a largerformat to ensure more square inches of visual space.