BENGALURU: Rangoli has always been slotted as a women’s art interest. There are very few men who have tried it, let alone do an impressive job of it. But Shashidhar Kumar, Special Assistant, at State Bank of Mysore, is fondly called Rangoli Shashi.
He was recently seen making a 10-foot -tall rangoli, featuring Lord Venkateshwara, at the bank during the Varamahalakshmi Puja.
While talking to City Express, he says that he uses stencils to make rangolis. “The stencil used to make this rangoli is 20-year-old. It is made from paper and has three parts. I made it, over six months,” he says, adding that he spent nine hours on the night before the puja to make rangoli and colour it.
“It took me six months to make Lord Venkateshwara’s stencil first in 1996. I presented it in front of Goddess Lakshmi at the bank,” says the 57-year-old. The goddess has a temple inside the bank. “After the work was done, I forgot it in office because I was a little tied up with work that day. After a few days, when I went to collect it, I could not find it. I was heartbroken but I had no other option but to make a similar one. I got onto the job and made a second one in over the next six months”. Since then, it has been close to his heart.
His love for rangoli is such that he has named his home and car as Rangavalli. It was his friends, family and the office management that encouraged him. “In 1987, when I moved to Benagaluru from my native Madanapalle, I took this art seriously. From then, I have made 400 stencils measuring six inches by 10 feet. The smallest is the stencil of a lotus or a Shankachakra and I can add to its size as per requirement,” he says.
The bigger one in his collection are theme-based. He says, “They illustrate stories of Ramayana, Dashavatar, Krishna Leela, Srichakra, Balaji and Bhagwat Geeta.”
He has hosted about 15 solo exhibitions in places like Kannada Bhavan in 2001, Karnataka Chitrakala Parishat in 2002, State Bank of Mysore in 1996 and 2006, and in Ravindra Kalashetra and ADA Rangamandira.
At The Lalit Ashok hotel, he has done rangolis for various seminars. “One was by Indian Institute of Astrophysics, another one was a World Wilderness Congress, third was during a conference by ISRO and fourth was a congress on retina by Minto Ophthalmic Hospital,” he says.
It was people’s appreciation of his work that inspired him to continue. “Some even said that it looks more like a painting than a rangoli,” he says.
When did he decide to start on this art? He goes back to when he was a child, when he used to observe his mother and sister making these colourful designs for various occasions.
Another rangoli artist Sakamma Krishnamurthy also inspired him. “Apart from stencils, he also used various crafts to make the art. After watching him at the age of 15, I decided to try my hand at it. Since then I haven’t looked back,” he says calling Krishnamurthy his Dronacharya because “I could only observe his work from a distance and learn, I never trained under him”. He started it as a hobby with small and simple designs.
But he doesn’t agree that rangoli is only a woman’s art. “Art is not confined to any gender,” he explains.
But did he face any ridicule because he was a man? He recalls an incident where at one of the hotels in the city, he was not allowed to make a rangoli for an event because he is a man. “They later saw my work and kept inviting me to make rangolis at their hotel for next two years. This was in 1996-97,” he says. Even his family members learn the art from him.
But the art requires a lot of patience as stencil preparation takes a lot of time, he says. Rangoli is a passion, and so the banker has no interest in making this a source of income.