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Ballooning ideas
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‘Puyal’ Ganesh sculpts balloons into fascinating shapes …and how!
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BEAUTY FROM BALLOONS Ganesh with some of his creations
‘Puyal’ Ganesh shows why he deserves that prefix to his name. At gale (‘puyal’) speed, he sculpts a giraffe, a swan, a flower and a teddy bear. And he accomplishes this without stone, chisel or mallet. Balloons have been substituted for stone and clay; his fingers assume the role of the tools. He manipulates a 2 inch by 60 inch balloons (called ‘260’) to create a variety of images.
There are only a handful of accomplished balloon sculptors in India today, but when Ganesh started out eight years ago, he had none to compare notes with. He relied on books and the Internet to learn techniques for manipulating balloons into familiar shapes. “Balloon sculptors are dime a dozen in the United States. But the number of men practising this art in India can be easily counted.” Balloon sculpting remains an unexplored area for many entertainers because of the high cost involved.
High cost
“When I speak of balloon sculpting, I speak of dollars. The balloons meant for sculpting have to imported from the West.” Ganesh buys online, from the web store tmyers.com. “Apart from two dealers in New Delhi, there is none selling 260s in India.” A set of one hundred 260 balloons costs $ 8. “Earlier, the company was sending its consignments by ship and I would get my pack of balloons a month after placing an order. Now, I get it in three days. But fast delivery means more expense.” Air mail adds another $8 to the procurement cost.
Sculptor’s balloons can’t be reused. In a show lasting just 30 minutes, Ganesh uses a minimum of 60 balloons. Considering he takes an average of about 25 seconds to create an image, this is not surprising. The number of balloons used must cross a hundred if he were to attempt complex images such as cycles, which take many balloons. These high costs encourage some entertainers to settle for the ‘160’ balloons (one inch in diameter and 60 inches in width) available in India. You get 140 160s for Rs. 70. But 160s are not suited for sculpting.” To create an image, ‘bubbles’ are made at certain points of a balloon and twisted a few times so they stay in place. As the 160s are hard, the bubbles get unwound.
Ganesh buys most of the paraphernalia required for his art from tmyers.com. One of them is a two-way pump that costs $6. An earlier model of the same pump lasted close to five years. “Compare this with a Chinese pump that broke the first time I used it!” Charging just Rs. 1,500 every show, Ganesh probably does not get adequate returns for his efforts. But he does not seem to mind it. He is employed as transmission executive at the All India Radio. Balloon sculpting and magic (he is a magician too) slake his thirst for performing before a live audience. “I used to produce and stage plays. Now, I entertain people with this rare art.”
PRINCE FREDERICK
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Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Mangalore
Puducherry
Tiruchirapalli
Thiruvananthapuram
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
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