Raghunath Krishna is the flywheel driving an initiative by alumni of The Hindu Higher Secondary School in Triplicane, the 1986 batch of the school, self-christened Big Street Boys. If the christening had happened in 1986 the day after the farewell, they need not tender any explanation to Backstreet Boys (est. 1993). If so, the American pop boy band would owe the boys from Triplicane a clear explanation. 

On the topic at hand, Raghunath’s felt-tip caricature pen (sometimes, a pencil or a piece of charcoal) scripts what would easily pass off as a “reaching-out, giving-back” story. Trained by Raghunath, that pen has a demonstrated history of coaxing grotesquely attention-grabbing images out of the mundane. It is now at the centre of a visual vulture conservation project for school students.

These children would be reminded every day about the bird that is lagging in the numbers game. Raghunath has designed labels to be pasted on school notebooks, and these carry caricatured representations of vultures, portraying them not as carrion-devouring toughies, but cute and cuddle-worthy pets. The facts can be fed to the children later, get their attention first; that thinking is evidently at play.

He observes that his caricature pen is swayed by two philosophies: draw with the a symbol of the target group pinned in the tack board in front of you; and two, no design that ever was effective was put the viewer to sleep, overpowering them with ennui. Hence no posters larded with data, just plain caricatures; info posters are necessary, but work only on the follow-up trail. Raghunath’s lessons on caricaturing animals for conservation can be viewed at his You Tube Channel, Pencils Rock Academy.

On June 18, the alumni group distributed a huge set of these labels to students of Olcott school at Besant Nagar and Raghunath spoke about why the vulture’s place in the ecosystem cannot be filled by any other creature. Any discussion about vulture is loud on biomagnification: how man-made chemical toxins enter the food chain and affect vultures as they pick at carrion.

This resources to create the labels were generated by the alumni group, members chipping in with contributions. Raghunath points out he would want the initiative to be extended to other schools including his alma mater, The Hindu Higher Secondary School, and that would depend on whether help beyond the batch is forthcoming.

This is not the first time Raghunath is interacting with students on the subject of species conservation. He is a brand strategist working with environment and nature conservation NGOs and creates awareness about the subject among communities living in the creases between wildlife sanctuaries, particularly the younger generations in their midst. He has done this work among forest-based communities in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka.

Among his other significant campaigns are the one on tiger reserves and another on elephants. Titled Elephany, the latter (an art project for children executed during the pandemic) celebrated jumbos, creatures seemingly breathed into life just for the felt-tip caricature pen.

Says Raghunath: “Every elephant is a gardener par excellence. In its lifetime, one without any major twists, an elephant will plant 18 lakh trees/ plants, spreading seeds through its dung.”