Sunday, Oct 12, 2003
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By Radha Venkatesan
A view of the bas-relief at the Rajiv Gandhi Memorial in Sriperumbudur.
Now, a massive 800-tonne stonewall, comprising over 400 panels, sculpted in the Mamallapuram style has come up at the southern end of the Rajiv Gandhi Ninaivakam (Memorial) at Sriperumbudur. Like the Arjuna Penance at Mamallapuram, this frieze too attempts to tell a legend. Indeed, the legend of the man who had a dream of a "strong, independent and self-reliant India." The former Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, was killed over 12 years ago just a few metres away from where the frieze now adorns his Memorial at Sriperumbudur, but his "dreams and visions" have been etched in the 45-metre long and 4.8-metre bas-relief. "I wished to visually reinterpret his vision, create a monument suitable for Rajiv Gandhi," says the artist, A. Ramachandran, who conceived, sketched and guided 100 craftsmen from Kancheepuram over the past eight years to chisel out "Rajiv's vision" in a "truly Indian style". For Mr. Ramachandran, a Delhi-based painter trained in Shantiniketan, the challenging offer to design the bas-relief came in 1995 from the then Prime Minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao. Immediately, he decided to "design something suited to Tamil Nadu's architecture". The obvious source of inspiration was the Pallava and Chola architectural styles. Creating a frieze on a stone canvas, larger than that of the Mamallapuram stone sculptures, was the basic concept. Then, gradually the thematic images of the three-phase frieze emerged. Opening with the stone inscription of Rajiv's famous words: "India is an old country, but a young nation. I am young and I too have a dream", the bas-relief traverses India's past and the present, with a stylised sculpture of Rajiv Gandhi in the middle. The first phase attempts to capture the Ganges dancing down the Himalayas and quenching the thirst of animals and birds. "The images of animals and birds — from elephants, to squirrels and crows — were brought in to make it interesting for the children who visit the Memorial," he explains. The Ganges flows down into a moat, while the panel leads up to a rural landscape complete with hovels and a market place. A stone portrait of Rajiv Gandhi brings us to a modern India captured through images of factories, furnaces, railway stations and trains. "The challenge was in training our craftsmen who are only used to creating frontal figures of deities. And it is quite a miracle that I did not break my legs while climbing up and down the scaffolding," smiles the 70-year-old artist. For the painter, who had done a mural at the Raj Ghat in New Delhi, this sculpture project was a nightmare in one sense. "I conceived the frieze but someone has created it. So, there was no knowing what the result exactly would be. Yet, it is not a bad achievement," he says. If visitors to the sprawling Rajiv Memorial see a slice of Mamallapuram in Sriperumbudur, the artist would have achieved his mission.
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