‘M-Seal’ing it with passion: Qutab Minar rises from his deft hands
Bengaluru: When 69-year-old Ramaiah Kumar was scheduled for a trip to Delhi in 2012, his son asked him for a replica of Qutab Minar as a souvenir, but Ramaiah could not find anything to bring back home. Determined not to disappoint his son, Ramaiah started making the Qutab Minar replica himself, and within a span of a few weeks it was ready.
Except, unlike the red sandstone of the real Qutab, Ramaiah’s Qutab was made of M-Seal! While not all could believe that the material used to plug leaks in pipes could be used to make replicas of monuments, Mr Ramaiah then went on to make some international monuments such as Big Ben Tower and St. Basil’s Cathedral (Russia) to prove the sceptics wrong.
Says the happy senior citizen, “Unlike New York or London, tourists can’t bring back souvenirs of country’s popular monuments in India. Hence, I make the monuments for family members and relatives who ask for any particular structure.” Interestingly Ramaiah does not use any tools for these replicas and uses his deft hands to create all the art works.
A replica of the Big Ben made by Ramaiah Kumar using M-seal
“Since I am an engineer, I have the experience of working with machines. Based on the same experience, I work on the models with bare hands and sculpt the monuments using M-seal. Most of the models are made of M-seal and a little paint. Wood or plastic is used as per the structural requirement,” he added.
Mr Ramaiah spends from one month to up to four months on a model and charges around Rs 1,000 per model. Though it takes a lot of effort and time, the end product makes all the efforts worthwhile, he beams. He is now considering making Opera House (Sydney) and Tanjore paintings, as per the request of his family members.
Ask him if he plans to hold an exhibition of his works, he laughs, “Maybe if I pursued this hobby at an early age I could have made hundreds of such models, but I have made around 12 models and I don’t think I can hold an exhibition!”
