BANGALORE: For Venkatesh Ellore, the image of Lord Ganesh is indeed a trigger for his spiritual pursuits. But the artist in Venkatesh takes it beyond the realm of worship, rendering words in the form of Ganesh with clinical precision and ease.

Lend him your name and watch him sketch the letters that seem to take a life of their own. The image of Ganesh would then emerge out of the collective positioning of those letters.

Venkatesh could have branched out deep into photography, being the son of the proprietor of the famed EGK Studios in Bangalore. But this Mechanical Engineering graduate from BMS College had other ideas. His versatility and artistic talent had to find a platform. And he discovered that in his Ganesh renderings. Till date, he has done over a thousand Ganeshs, customised, touched up with computer graphics and neatly framed.

Of course, he does freehand work, much quicker than what you take to spell Ganesh. Venkatesh has done over 6,000 such works. The latest is a work on "Suvarna Karnataka," well timed to coincide with the golden jubilee year of Karnataka. Having rendered that in both Kannada and English, the artist is now looking forward to the big day, November 1. Ten days later, he too would celebrate his 50th birthday.

Venkatesh has now made it a point to gift a wordy Ganesh free to a stranger. "I want to put a smile on the stranger's face," he explains. Otherwise, he is quite busy with orders from companies. With a company's name captured within the image of Ganesh, you not only pray to the Lord but also look up to the company's name.

"I am an artist and I always wanted to be a different kind of an artist. Sathya Sai Baba says there is a God in every human being. He has realised it while we have yet to do so. His words had an impact on me. I think this art of using letters to depict the image of Ganesh is my way of trying to find God. I am also helping others to find God," he says.

Venkatesh had stumbled upon his way with the art, much early. "As a child, I was a very good artist and a visualiser," he recalls.

But the notion that art would not fetch much, caught up with him too. Destiny took him to engineering, although he managed to set up a fitness centre in Indiranagar, and even venture into South Indian Karate in the process. Later, during his engineering college days, he discovered another talent: An amazing, rare ability to write backwards, upside down and even mirror-image words, that too with ambidextrous ease. For proof, watch him write long sentences backwards, and with both hands, simultaneously.

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