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His childhood passion comes of age

M Basant Kumar teaching students to make models of vessels at his workshop in Berhampur on Sunday.

BERHAMPUR: M. Basant Kumar of the city is now confident that his childhood passion to build models of ships could become a paying profession for him.

This Management degree holder has formed an organisation ‘Dream Waves’ with a dream to convert his passion into a profession. He has also got together unique assistants. His four assistants getting trained under him are school students P. Rohit, S. Vaibhav, P. Rakesh and A. Ashok. Together these youngsters create true to scale prototypes of ships, which have commercial viability.

They mostly use cardboard in place of balsa wood for their prototypes. Basant wants to make it their speciality rather than a handicap. “I have dream to construct largest true to scale prototype of a ship in the world using only cardboard,” Basant said. He never had any professional training to construct these models. Internet and books provided him the basic instructions.

It started while he was in Class V. After seeing an art and craft program on TV, his mother and he managed to construct a model of a crane at home. Like any other student of his age he got attracted towards the rockets.

He tried to get his models as close to the true scales as possible by basing them on the pictures in his father M. Narayan Muthy’s collection of popular science books. He showed up his real skill when he built up the model of ‘Titanic’ with the help of his father.

After that he never sat silent. He also started teaching students the skills he had developed on his own. His true to scale prototypes of ships were also on demand. They became part of Marine Academies and other institutions in and around the city. He did not leave his passion when he reached Vizag to study management.

There also his skill was applauded and he constructed some prototypes for the Vizag steel plant. Talks are on with the authorities of HSL for supply of working prototypes including a large hovercraft model.

According to him cost of his models vary from Rs. 2,000 to Rs. 6,000 as per their finishing and size. Now he is putting more stress on the variants of cardboard available in the country which happens to be his major raw material. He feel that it could become a profession for him and his students.

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