When I began writing what now is A Cloud Called Bhura (Talking Cub, 2019), I didn’t know I was writing cli-fi. I had studied the Asian Brown Cloud phenomenon while pursuing my Master’s at the University for Peace in Costa Rica, where I specialised in climate change. What struck me, while reading responses to the cloud, is just how perceptions to the climate crisis are sometimes shaped not by science, but by our immediate bubble – whether it’s what the politicians are saying, how the media is reporting it, or what the WhatsApp University is sharing on your phone. This setting felt ripe for a satire.

That’s how the idea of an obnoxious, rhyming brown cloud hovering over Mumbai came to me. What if, I wondered, the brown cloud was a tangible force? Would we react differently? Would we act or would we leave the city, and how would it impact people and the city’s denizens? Aindri C. cleverly took my text and made chapter openers that gave a glimpse of how oddly the humans reacted to Bhura – by wearing cloud-shaped clothing, taking selfies, and holding lots of random press conferences.

What I knew was that the ones who would respond to Bhura would be the children. After all, my work over the last two decades had led me to understand that children care about the natural world and have a strong sense of justice. And, as Rachel Carson reminds us, an inherent sense of wonder.

As Amni, Tammy, Mithil and Andrew’s story went out into the world in 2019, six years after I started writing it, Greta Thunberg’s clarion call for Fridays For Future resonated with children and young people, and I watched in awe as thousands around the world gathered demanding a better future.

Writing fiction didn’t come easy to me. I am a journalist, non-fiction is what I know, even though it’s fiction I turn to for comfort. Writing my first book So You Want to Know About the Environment (Red Turtle, 2017) – about climate, water, waste, wildlife and food – was something I could do. Research, interview, write. Rewrite. Listen to my editor. Rewrite.

But then, I grew up on nature storybooks by writers like Enid Blyton and Gerald Durrell, and then discovered Ranjit Lal and Zai Whitaker. I found that I loved imagining stories and characters. Like Andrew who refused to pitch in during the crisis. Or Tammy who suddenly appeared after the first draft, and made me rewrite the book from scratch!

Grief led me to write Savi and the Memory Keeper (Hachette, 2021) a story about personal and planetary losses. I must admit I tend to embrace my very filmy side in my books, whether it’s the villainous The League of Extraordinary Uncles and Two Aunties in Savi or an actor-cum-superhero who inaugurates a smog-sucking machine with a special dance and song in Bhura. My agent once asked me if I was sure about this cinematic approach. Well, I said, what’s life without Bollywood? To all my editors’ credit, none of them have ever axed any of these scenes. Other bits, yes, because I do tend to get over-excited and have to be told to Keep Calm and Edit That Out!

Melodrama aside, the fact is anything you’re writing in today’s world will have something about climate change. School disruptions from flooding, displacement because of crop failures, heat waves and coping with climate change are all very real. No wonder, as the planet heats up, we’re seeing more creators writing and illustrating the climate as part of their narratives.

Which is why it amuses me when I hear stuff like –

- What, you’re writing about climate change again? (Wake up and smell the climate-changed coffee, please!)

- Let’s write about climate, there is lots of funding there. (No one’s sent it my way, alas. But do get

in touch if you want to!)

- Oh yes, climate, now it’s a buzzword. (No, the bees are dying so there’s lesser buzzing!)

- Fiction? (Yes, the thing that comes from imagination and all that stuff.) Why? Write non-fiction. Even better, make a climate curriculum.

- Cli-fi? Children don’t go for cli-fi. (Insert eye roll!)

- That’s not how you write books. (Okay, then!)

I found camaraderie in my readers who have the best questions and responses – every adult in the room usually says they will leave the city if Bhura comes, while almost all the children respond with, oh we will find out what’s happening. Similarly, every child wants to save Tree in Savi.

While India has a rich tapestry of green kidlit, not everyone was convinced about climate writing when I started. Someone asked me, is this really true, pointing at the climate chapter in So You Want to Know About the Environment. I know that sales teams were sceptical, but my editors stood by my books. Now, it’s changing, thankfully. Slowly, but surely. 

Internationally, all you have to do is look at the very cool Climate Fiction Writers League founded by Wren James (who writes as Lauren James) that has single-handedly done so much to turn the spotlight on climate writers and their books. Through their newsletters and discussion spaces, I found like-minded folks creating some amazing stories for the present and the future. When Wren began editing the anthology Future Hopes: Hopeful Stories in a Time of Climate Change (Walker, 2024), they asked me to be part of it. I must admit that I struggled because I was going through a writing slump. But then I watched a video featuring farmers who supply coffee beans to Black Baza coffee, where they were talking about the tree diversity on their farms and animal visitors like deer and leopards, and I knew my story would be about them.

I love being a climate writer, but I wish I didn’t have to be one. That we could instead hit Ctrl Z on the damage we’ve wrecked on this planet we call home, endangering not only our present, but also the future of children and the denizens who share Earth with us. 

Whenever I visit schools or go to literature festivals, I find increasingly that children are falling out of love with nature. That inherent sense of wonder that Rachel Carson wrote about has become fractured with environmental generational amnesia becoming a reality, especially amongst urban children. When my colleague and I sat reading responses from children across India while working on We Hope: Children on Climate Change (Pratham Books, 2022), we realised with truly a sad heart, that so many of them now have a relationship with nature that’s either transactional or anxiety-laden. In Go Wild! (Penguin, 2024), an anthology I edited, which has been beautifully illustrated by Prabha Mallya, we celebrated nature writing with comics, fiction, non-fiction, poetry and a photo essay. Every contributor believed in the running theme of the book – rewilding imaginations.

Which is why we need stories – to lure children back to nature, to care enough to grow up and vote green. But really, to just be a happy duck in the natural world whether it’s a tree by your school, a little patch of green in your society or the beach in your city. Then you will know that magic exists. And it’s nature. That is why I wrote When Fairyland Lost Its Magic (HarperCollins, 2023). After all, the denizens of Fairyland are very much nature creatures – like the Little Mermaid and her underwater realm, the Snow Queen and her snow palace, or even the name Snow White – they are the ones who let our imaginations grow wild, like the trees in that Enchanted Forest. In one gorgeously illustrated page by Rajiv Eipe, I wrote: But then, most of these children grew up and forgot what they had read in those books. That magic is real. That new world can be found on top of trees and under toadstools. The shimmering fireflies dance like fairies lighting our lives like moonlight… And that the Earth is the witch and the wizard…

Hope floats, and it’s what keeps me going as a writer for children. You don’t have to write la la endings, but offer hope instead. And then what? Let the magic of nature and words and illustrations do the rest.

About the author: 

When Bijal Vachharajani is not reading a children’s book, she is writing or editing one. She is the author of multiple planet-friendly books including A Cloud Called Bhura, Savi and the Memory Keeper and When Fairyland Lost Its Magic and is also a certified climate worrier.