This children's storybook conveys an environmental message with under-threat flamingos as protagonists

Illustrator Kuriyan believes a strange mixture of fun and a foreboding sense of something not being right, works for the book. ILLUSTRATIONS COURTESY/PRIYA KURIYAN, TULIKA BOOKS

When the Bandra-Worli Sea Link was under construction, I wondered how the flamingos - who migrate to Sewri each year - would survive the mess the construction wrought. The frames I imagined stayed with me. And now we're repeating the same horrors with the Coastal Road, Mumbai's new sea links, and the endless other such horrific, blindly approved ‘development' projects," rues Devashish Makhija, author of the just-released Go Go Flamingo (Tulika Books), a children's book where a flamboyance of flamingos flying into Mumbai offer an honest take on the impact of development on its already-threatened environment.

The flamingos are representative of all nature - it is at first bewildered, then curious, then horrified, and finally, destroyed by man's endless appetite for destruction," he elaborates. The author, who is an award-winning film director, was clear about the subject but also aware that nudging his target audience to read it was going to be a challenge. "To make the [young] reader relate to the flamingos, and their eventual quandary, I humanised and personalised them. Because we [humans] have an innate primitive mechanism for our survival that won't easily allow us to empathise with the other. To make the reader feel for the other, I thought of giving the flamingos human traits." We loved this representation in the flamingos' names, courtesy Makhija's ability to seamlessly blend quirk with a critical topic.

Based on rough storyboards, Kuriyan juxtaposed everyday waste onto proportionate size cut-outs of the flamingo characters, and shot them. With the hose pipe that was almost life-size, she drew a nearly life-size flamingo image to juxtapose it along with the pipe for authenticity. The pictures were photoshopped and placed within the book's layout

Illustrator and artist Priya Kuriyan wove magic to bring life into these talking-emoting flamingos. "I have a habit of creating characters by juxtaposing objects over drawings, and photographing them. Devashish saw one such image I had created of flamingos entangled with one another that I had made with a bird of paradise flower. It was his cue to write this story, and it also became my cue to the treatment the picture book would require," recalls Kuriyan who prefers working with a plan for her books. However, this assignment was different, "because much depended on the objects I could source. So, I had to be okay with some degree of unpredictability. Despite having a rough storyboard, I had to adapt and change a lot."

Makhija and Kuriyan wanted children to first be intrigued by the book, and its appearance, and then be drawn into its environmental message. "Dev was sure from the start that there should be the element of irony that runs throughout, where the flamingos are covered in garbage, yet they are clueless about what it does to them (which is a reflection of our [humans'] attitude when it comes to polluting our Earth)," shares Kuriyan.

Makhija was clear that the garbage the flamingos discover would be the ‘Found Objects'. This would give the storyline the required sense of two worlds colliding (representative of organic nature, and the inorganic man's world). He wanted to ensure that children relate immediately to the waste from our world, which is all around us, daily "…so that the flamingos feel like they are from another world than our own illustrative world - hopefully, to sub-textually communicate that we treat anyone from a world removed from our own as the other, and value their lives and prerogatives much less than our own."

Makhija leaves us with a probing connection between Mumbaikars and these pink beauties, "These flamingos are migrants, quite like I have been all my life. I didn't originate in the lands I forage for food in. I am perhaps unwelcome, but am I unable to see that until it's too late?"

ON May 31; 11 am (book discussion) AT Kahani Tree, Prabhadevi.
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Kids' Corner

The Review

Go Go Flamingo by Devashish Makhija is a very interesting book for young kids who are six years old and above. It speaks of a flock of flamingos who land in the city waters, and are horribly surprised. The book shows how we pollute water bodies in Mumbai where flamingos come to breed in the winter months and how we human beings dirty the (Sewri) Creek by throwing garbage and then, the flamingos eat this garbage. The flamingo drawings by Priya Kuriyan are super cool, cheerful and realistic, showing the poor birds getting caught with pipes, pearl necklaces, nets, syringes and slippers.

The book will help children understand how bad things are. It will help their imagination about flamingos, and how creeks and water bodies look when under threat. It will also help them learn to not pollute water bodies. The colour of the flamingos is very pretty, and the illustrations are mind-blowing. Children will enjoy it and develop imagination about the creeks and as well as beautiful images of flamingos, and their appearance.

I feel it is important for the coming generations to be aware of their environment. Go Go Flamingo offers knowledge about not harming the ecosystem. Parents, please buy the book, and enjoy it with your kids. It will be a good time-spending activity with them.

Aanya Kalbag, Dadar