A cartoon exhibition that underscores the importance of trees to human beings

It is a riff on a familiar image—the human evolution timeline—capturing man’s progress from primate to man. In Mr. Chiluveru Mrityunjay’s cartoon, one of the many which forms part of his repertoire of tree sketches, however, the timeline appears to be reversed. We see an evolved Homo Sapien reverting back to his primordial form, becoming a large ape holding an axe and crouching beside a tree, all ready to cut it. Cutting trees, in Mr. Mrityunjay’s head, is clearly very regressive behaviour.

It is a riff on a familiar image—the human evolution timeline—capturing man’s progress from primate to man. In Mr. Chiluveru Mrityunjay’s cartoon, one of the many which forms part of his repertoire of tree sketches, however, the timeline appears to be reversed. We see an evolved Homo Sapien reverting back to his primordial form, becoming a large ape holding an axe and crouching beside a tree, all ready to cut it. Cutting trees, in Mr. Mrityunjay’s head, is clearly very regressive behaviour.

“The cartoons show how the tree is important to a human being,” agrees Mr. Mrityunjay, a staff cartoonist working in Namaste Telangana, who will be exhibiting some of his cartoons about trees at the Indian Institute of Cartoonists this month. “I drew to create awareness among the public about tree plantation,” says a Hyderabad-based political cartoonist, who hand-drew these sketches and digitally coloured them. “These cartoons on trees pumped more oxygen and excitement in me.”

The tree toons were inspired by the Green India Challenge, a tree-planting initiative started by J. Santosh Kumar, a Rajya Sabha MP from the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), back in 2018. Mr. Mrityunjay says that he took 8 months to draw 200 cartoons, which were recently published in a coffee table book Haritha Haasam. “ “80 cartoons among those will be displayed at the exhibition,” says the cartoonist, adding that he took the time to create these cartoons amidst his daily political cartoons and caricatures. “Drawing all these (tree) cartoons took me out for a picnic,” states the cartoonist and social activist, whose cartoons usually focus on social issues such as hunger, poverty, corruption, natural disasters and sectarian strife.

About the artist

Chiluveru Mrityunjay grew up in a small village, Bhoodan Pochampally, about 80 kms away from Mysore, and began drawing political cartoons at the age of twenty. His father, the late Ch Ramalingam was a handloom artisan who used to weave the portraits of political personalities on cloth. “Now I am doing portraits of political personalities on a digital pad,” says the artist, who—in a previous interview with this newspaper—admitted that he especially likes the black-and-white portraits of the American cartoonist, Albert Hirschfeld.

On future plans, Mr. Mrityunjay, who has been working with Namaste Telangana for the past twelve years and is best known for his political cartoons drawn during the Telangana movement, says, “All I have to do is draw cartoons. I am working on political cartoons of contemporary issues.”