Still life

How do you preserve the memory of a lost loved one? We have struggled with this for thousands of years... moving from mourning jewellery to death portraits and, now, hyper-realistic life-sized silicone statues

- Anesha George

Who can predict what form grief will take, says Subimal Das, 49 (right), a sculptor in Kolkata.

He has been taking ‘on some unusual commissions lately.

For 25 years, he says, he largely sculpted celebritiés (in hyper-realistic silicone). Mahatma Gandhi for a museum in Patna, Virat Kohli for an amusement park in Harid-war, Rabindranath Tagore for the West Bengal Assembly building.

Since 202i, business has picked up, with the bulk of it coming from a new direction. Families are approaching him for statues of: a missing son, a wife lost suddenly to the pandemic, a beloved professor.

He has created about 50 such sculptures in four years, for families from West Bengal, Sikkim, Assam, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. The figures are often dressed in the clothes of the lost loved one, and eventually positioned to fit into the house they once inhabited. Prices start at Rs 3 lakh.

Each likeness is first shaped in clay. At this stage, the family is invited to offer feedback. “It is important to capture the person's essence, not just their likeness,” Das explains. This can involve adjustments to the eyes, nose, or the crook of a smile.

“He was all I had after I lost my husband at 28. Then I lost him when he was 28,” says Gita Bhattacharjee, 65, who commissioned a sculpture of her missing son Abhishek Bhat-tacharjee last year, after seeing Das’s work in local news reports.