God Creates Man Creates God!!!

A hammer, a sickle and a stone is all the've got to create their master piece. They create Gods and Goddesses that millions of people will bow to some day. They are the artists with hammers – the sculptors at Mahabalipuram.
“No one in my family has done this job before, it’s purely out of my own interest and passion for sculpting that I have chosen this field,” says Ravi (33) who has done his B.Sc. in Temple Architecture from the Government college of Architecture and Sculptures. Apart from a passion and love for the art one needs to have an enormous amount of patience.
“A degree in Sculpting sure helps, but it’s the practice and patience that helps you become a fine sculptor,” adds Ravi who has an experience of 18 years apart from his three years degree. “It took me about 10 to 12 years to be able to carve a full stone all by myself,” he adds.
The amount of detail on a piece of sculpture depends on the amount the customer is willing to shell out for a piece of sculpture. A statue of about 1 to 1 ½ feet takes at least five days to complete. “We have even spent Six months to One year on just one statue,” says Pushparajan (64) who has been sculpting for the past 50 years.
“The stone that we use for carving are usually brought from vallajabad and sometimes from Karnataka,” says Ravi. “Only these stones are easy to carve and when you bang the stone they give out the sound of a bell, which you won’t find in any other stone except the ones in Vallajabad in Kanchipuram,” adds Ravi.
“The rates of the statues vary from 10,000 to 4 lakhs and we are paid Rs.250 per day,” says Raja another sculptor who has been doing this since the age of 14.
“The only local markets we have are the temples. 70% of our clients are all foreigners,” says Subramani the owner of a sculpting shop who has 10 sculptors working under him.
Mahabalipuram is one of the main tourist attractions of Tamil Nadu and these sculptors have been doing this for generations. Yet, they do not have any pension schemes or even a proper chanelised system to sell their creations. The government has built a small shopping complex exclusively to sell sculptures, but so far not one shop has been taken by any of the sculpting shop owners.
“This is the most difficult of arts,” says Pushparajan. “One small mistake, the stone could crack and months of hard work and patience will go in vain. In some cases the stone itself would have a hollow space within them that we can’t find out and for no mistake of ours all our work will break in an instance” adds Pushparajan, pointing a statue of Natrajan with a broken leg lying under a lamp post.