PATHANAMTHITTA: They deftly juggled and rolled the Rubik’s Cubes, arraying them from the bottom up on to a specially designed metal canvas.
One by one, Abhinav Krishna, 10, and his brother Advaith, 6, linked the colour schemes to slowly reveal the mosaic of Lord Ayyappa. A total of 504 cubes were used for the creation.
It takes hand speed and mental calculation to make this art form unique and interesting. The two, from Amballur, in Ernakulam, used standard (5.5cm) Rubik’s Cubes, with 15 of them taking up a row and 20 a column. The brothers attribute their expertise in Rubik’s Cube to their mother, Indu Bijoy, who learned to solve it by watching YouTube videos.
According to Indu, she has been training Abhinav, a student of grade 6, since the age of five.
Advaith, though, learned the techniques by observing his brother and mother.
Their mosaic of Ayyappa was part of a performance in Sabarimala, for which they were specially invited by ADGP S Sreejith, who is the chief police coordinator in Sabarimala. The brothers had impressed Sreejith during a previous performance.
The boys, who were also on their first pilgrimage to the hill shrine as ‘Kanni Ayyappans,’ wereaccompanied by their father T M Bijoy, an officer at Infopark.
“Abhinav started creating cube mosaics last December. We assembled an image of Jesus Christ to coincide with Christmas. This was for our YouTube channel. They also created an image of Sree Narayana Guru. This got them got noticed,” says Indu.
Former President A P J Abdul Kalam, film stars Mammootty and Mohanlal as well as flags of around 40 countries have all been subjects of their performances at various venues.
“ACP Raj Kumar P, filmmaker Shyam Mangalath and music director Prasanth Mohan have been supportive in offering various platforms to the kids,” Indu added.
The brothers also feature in the videos of the Ayyappa devotional album recently launched by ADGP Sreejith.
Abhinav has performed at school on various occasions, his class teacher Nitha said.
The brothers have participated in various national-level Rubik’s Cube competitions, including those conducted by SMA Abacus, an organisation that provides abacus training to children, she added.