Being an air-traffic controller, guiding multiple flights at a time, is a taxing job. But for 45-year-old K A Balakrishnan, who draws cartoons in between his communiques with pilots, it’s a cinch. Over 20 years in the profession now, Balakrishnan’s talent for sketching humorous cartoons has earned him the title of ‘cartoonist controller’ with ATC staff across India. “I had a knack for painting and sketching from my school days. I used to draw caricatures of my teachers and friends,” he says, explaining how it all started.
So, in a particularly terse situation, when other controllers are fretting and perspiring, Bala is seen drawing cartoons of them—which lightens the atmosphere in the control tower. “At least everybody is able to laugh in between,” he says adding that his masters degree in psychology has trained him to observe people carefully. “There is a lot of humour in aviation, whether it’s the accents of pilots, their non-comprehension of our messages or the contorted faces of tensed controllers. In my first posting in Kolkata in 1989, I drew caricatures of colleagues everyday and put them up on the notice board. They still have them saved,” he says.
In the ’80’s, cartooning was not a profitable profession, and Bala’s fascination with aircraft made him sit for the National Airport Authority (now Airports Authority of India) exam. “After getting selected, during the training period, we came across this term: ‘Wheels-up landing’. While everyone was trying to figure out what that meant, I instinctively drew a cartoon of an aircraft trying to land upside down. Ever since, I have been drawing. It’s a great stress buster,” he says.
From then on, Bala’s cartoons have been a hit at every posting he went to. Kolkata, Dimapur, Chennai and now Varanasi, Bala’s passion and keen sense of humour in his cartoons is recognised and respected by senior bureaucrats in aviation. In fact, at the recently held ATC Guild’s seminar in Delhi, what stood out through the two-day event were Bala’s cartoons on display at the venue. “Now the bosses are also asking to be cartooned,” he smiles, adding that his next agenda would be to draw cartoons of senior stalwarts of aviation in India.