Ram Sutar @100
The Noida home of Ram Vanaji Sutar is hard to miss. Marble and bronze statues of Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel and Indira Gandhi fill its balconies. Inside, a gallery of giants greets you — Mahatma Gandhi bending down to pick a handful of salt at Dandi, and more of Nehru, Patel and Indira. Statues of gods, goddesses, sages, legendary warriors, and politicians stare with steely eyes at or beyond you. In the huge workshop inside, a young sculptor wearing headphones is carving the paws of a 7-foot-high squirrel out of a white thermocol kind of material. It’s meant for a temple in Ayodhya. The rest of the room is filled with awards and pieces of sculptures — a head here, a hand there, some of them gargantuan, while others are scaled models. Ram Sutar, termed by many, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as one of India’s greatest living sculptors, is waiting in a room just beyond.
