Volume 6 Numbers 1 and 2 | Apr-Sept 2026

The Morphlings

Story idea by Dhruv George-Vetoskar | Story and art by Pankaj Saikia

 
Dhruv’s pitch:

When I was younger, say 6 or 7 years old, I had a deep belief that I possessed a secret power – if I touched an animal, I was able to morph into it! Later, I realised that these were just very realistic dreams but at that point I was overjoyed to be soaring in the sky as the crow which I had made friends with in my backyard.

As I grew up, my environmentally-conscious mother influenced this dream and instead of skipping chores as a sparrow, I was a chameleon sneaking into smugglers camps and releasing the animals from their cages back into the wild. If I had this power today, I would be at the front of protection acts, morphed as a snow leopard roaming the Himalayas, watching poachers from the shadows and scaring them off before they could strike. I would soar as a sea eagle over oil-slicked coasts, guiding clean-up crews to struggling marine life.

It was all in my head but those dreams made me see the world differently. Made me see that every little life – no matter how insignificant to us – was still important in its own odd little way. They made me sure that if one imagines what it’s like to be something else, we’d try harder to protect it.