Nine Lives(80)

When I came back at 9 a.m. the following morning, Srikanda had already been at work for five hours: his day began when the workshop opened at 4 a.m.

As he chipped away with his chisel, now finishing a large idol of the mountain god of Kerala, Lord Ayappa, I asked him about his childhood. “I don’t remember when I first visited my father’s workshop,” said Srikanda. “It was probably as a baby. I spent much of my childhood there, and even before we went to school my father encouraged us to play there, making toy animals with the wax and resin. First I made a snake, then an elephant. All this came in the same way that a fish knows how to swim, without having to be taught. It is in my blood.”

Srikanda said that it was while watching a procession of the gods through Swamimalai that he thought for the first time that he had to become a sculptor like his grandfather, father and uncles.

“It was the festival of Kartika,” he said, “and huge crowds were pouring into the village to watch the procession of Murugan through the town. Many were carrying pots of milk on their head with which to bathe the idols. It is said that if you go to the temple on that day whatever you wish for will be accomplished.

“Everyone was decorating the front of their house, and my father had put hundreds of bronze idols from his store out on the shop front. Eventually the temple chariot passed our shop—it was much smaller in those days—and as it passed my father whispered to me that our forefathers had made the image of Murugan and donated it to the temple. I was so proud, and realised that these skills we pass down are the gods’ gift to this family. Ever since then my only ambition has been to be a master craftsman and to try to equal the skills of my father and uncle.

“I trained by watching my father. At the same time my grandfather would teach us all Sanskrit for three hours a day so that we could read and understand the complex sacred geometry of the Shilpa Shastras, and comprehend the nature of each deity. From the age of eighteen, once we had got places at college, we were allowed to begin our formal training in the college holidays. First we were taught to work wax and make the wax models, with our father overseeing our work. Only then were we allowed to graduate to engraving and finishing all the jewellery and ornamental articles on the bodies of the deities. Making the faces and hands, finishing them, and the whole process of casting: these are the most difficult skills. The chiselling is the most painful part to accomplish: if you work hard even for one day you can get a bad pain at the back of your shoulders.

“In the house, my father was very free. He played with all of us, and just smiled if we made a noise, or if we three brothers fought with one another. But in the factory he was completely different. If we made any noise or didn’t concentrate on our work he could be very severe and very angry—everything was about rules and regulations. He wanted us to treat our work like yoga, and lose ourselves in a trance of total concentration.

“Every month or so he would take us to the Tanjore Museum, where they have on display the greatest collection of Chola bronzes in the world. Even the museum in Delhi does not have their equal. My father used to say that this was our university. He would make us look at each piece very carefully, and when we got home he would make us try to copy the statue in wax. It was the best training I could ever have had. The work of our ancestors has never been equalled, and they are still the best teachers.

“Once when there was the Festival of India in New York, the government asked my father to make a copy of the greatest masterpiece in the museum—Shiva as Vrishabhavahana, the herdsman, from the hoard of buried bronzes that were unearthed in Tiruvengadu in the 1950s. Many people regard it as the finest bronze in the world. My father moved into the museum and he took us with him as his assistants. We lived there for six weeks and when the replica was finished no one could tell the difference between the two. The Archaeological Survey of India were so anxious about its perfection that they made my father write REPLICA in large letters on each side of the plinth, then placed it in a vault in their headquarters in Madras in case anyone tried to switch the two. Even today when we export our idols they are frequently seized by customs officers who think we are smuggling Chola originals.

“In 1984, at the age of twenty-two, soon after we had finished at the museum, my father decided I had learned enough to begin working on my first idol. He determined that I should begin my career by making the goddess of our village, Vikkali Amman. I worked night and day to get the wax model exactly correct, then to make a good mould. We fired the mould after three weeks of work, and I then spent three further weeks finishing the model. When it was done I presented it very formally to my father, as a chela to his guru. I was very nervous, as he was not easily pleased.