Watch What You Eat

This was my cover plate for Punchtantra describing the absurdities of the human condition, which is the essence of the Panchatantra.

The tree represents knowledge, the parrots – multiple generations – pass on their wisdom, through the spoken word, as was traditionally done in India for centuries. The mommy elephant – patient and wise – ignores her babies’complaints, as one is teased by his older sibling and the monkey, so that they can figure out a way to handle life.

The frogs, are so deeply immersed in gossip , that they are oblivious to the snake lurking in the grass, hungry for his supper.

The squirrel (the artist) is just hanging in there on mommy elephant’s trunk for the ride of her life – through the vulnerable jungle of humanity.

Moral: Focus on your supper, lest you want to become another’s.

Aditi Raychoudhury. Tree of Life. Pen and Ink. 1996.

About the Book:

A wacky take-off on Vishnu Sharma’s PanchatantraInspired by James Finn Garner’s Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, best-selling author Gautam Bhatia takes the men, women and animals of the Panchatantra and relocates them in contemporary India with its newly acquired nations of political correctness. So we have the fiercely vocal lesbian feminist, Yajnadatta, who leaves her husband for a woman; the expatriate dog Chitranga who flees racial persecution in the West; and a mongoose with an Oedipus complex, armed with a .45 Colt. As these characters engage with the burning issues of the day—unemployment, oppression, environmental pollution, sexual incompatibility—they lay bare the hilarious absurdities of our muddled world.

Product Details:

Title: Punchtantra
Author: Gautam Bhatia
ISBN: 0140271163
ISBN-13: 9780140271164
Binding: Paperback
Publishing Date: 1998
Publisher: Penguin Books India
Number of Pages: 232