‘I talked to the stone as I worked’

By Shyam Sundar Vattam | NT

Yogiraj’s steel-blade rotates 28,000 times a minute, slicing through stone like butter. Sharp fragments of stone fly out at the workers. It is dangerous work, the smallest mistake could be fatal. A slip with the hammer and chisel could have disastrous consequences. “I did a puja to avoid obstacles, praying for everyone’s safety during the project,” Yogiraj says. And after nine months, as Yogiraj and his team of seven assistants worked 14 hours a day, saw the great Indian saint, Adi Shankaracharya emerge from a block of stone. The stone itself, Krishna Shile, has been used for over 1000 years, used in the idols of Belur and Halebid, is now in Kedarnath, the mountainous abode of Lord Shiva himself. Seated in Padmasana in snow-capped Kedarnath, towering over the world from a height of 12-feet, Adi Shankaracharya has been returned once more to where he is said to have found ‘Samadhi’. Devotees were, no doubt, glued to their television screens as Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled the 35-ton statue of Adi Shankaracharya, the propagator of the Dvaita philosophy. All except Yogiraj, who was surrounded by the media, all vying for his attention. While he may not have seen the statue on TV, he was the man who built it. His disappointment was short-lived for he was soon elated to receive a letter from the Prime Minister’s office in Delhi, saying that Narendra Modi wished to meet with him in the capital.

The art form is in his blood - Yogiraj is a fifth generation sculptor. His great-great grandfather, he says, worked for the Devanur Mutt in Chamarajanagar. Shilpi, won the National Award, which he received from then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, the Rajyotsava Award and the Lalit Kala Academy Award. “He was also a sculptor in the Mysuru palace,” Yogiraj says. Shilpi even presented Nehru with a statuette of Darpana Sundari (a replica of the statue in the historic Belur Temple), when he visited Bengaluru in the 1950s. “Nehru asked my grandfather what he wanted in return, my grandfather said he only desired a photograph with him.” In 1994, Shilpi created a sculpture of Sri Chamaraja Wadiyar, to mark the centenary celebrations of the Mysore Zoo. It holds pride of place there, at the entrance. His father, he says, is his guru, “nobody else.”

Yogiraj’s career has been just as illustrious. “I sculpted the marble statue of Sr Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar at Hardinge Circle,” he says. “I also did the statue of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa in 2017, currently the biggest in the country. It has been placed at Vivekananda Circle. I also made the statue of Dr B.R. Ambedkar, which is outside Town Hall.”

Yogiraj had not imagined himself taking on the task in Kedarnath - he never intended to do so. It was his friend, Vijay, who sent photographs of Yogiraj’s work in response to the central government’s call for artists. “My work was appreciated and I got the order.” Jindal Steel Works, which had taken the initiative to install the Adi Shankaracharya statue and was working with the Prime Minister’s Office, reached out to Yogiraj first. “I was asked to make a mwodel.” He prepared a two-foot model and sent it off in August 2020, by which time the PM was examining entries sent in from across the country. He “distributed sweets to his family members,” he says, when he got the confirmation call in September.

The work began immediately. Yogiraj got in touch with the Indian Air Force, for the whopping 35-tonne statue could only be lifted by a Chinnok helicopter plane.

Selecting the stone

The first step, he explains, was the selection of the stone. “It needed to be a type that could withstand the vagaries of nature and the severe conditions in Kedarnath - the sun, the rain, the cold, the snow.” He chose the Krishna Shile (black stone), found in H.D. Kote in Mysuru district and Hassan. “We have been using the same variety of stone for the last 1000 years. The statues in the Belur and Halebid temples are also sculpted from Krishna Shile.” It’s a remarkably tough stone, one that does not react to wind, sun, rain or even fire.

“We worked 14 hours a day. It was a ritual in itself, we would never begin without bathing, performing a puja and remembering our forefathers.” Yogiraj recalls. “We didn’t take a day off, or pause to celebrate a festival. What celebration could compare to this one, to creating a statue of Adi Shankaracharya for the most sacred place in India? We also knew the statue would be unveiled by the Prime Minister. Compromising in any way was not an option. Everything had to be perfect. From every angle.”

The journey to Kedarnath

Whe