J - Joyful, L - Luxurious, I - Iconic,
N - Novelty, E - Elegance

JLine Arts Mission statement

“When we perceive the richest traditions, cultural heritages and distinctive works of art of our own culture, we become indestructible and powerful. If we do not realize our heritage or begin to forget the things salient to our culture, then we will lose it and lose it forever.”

Story of our JLine Arts

I thought it was one normal day, like the day before, and the day before that. But it wasn’t.

I decided to go with our family to a temple which is in the southern part of Tamil Nadu. We reached the temple in a couple of hours. The moment I saw the front elevation of the temple and the temple tower, I started walking fast so I did not miss enjoying the temple even for a minute. Once I entered the temple, I was in complete Awe. I had no words to describe the stunning architecture and the enthralling beauty of the temple. What a soul satisfaction?

Finally after several hours of being immersed in its aestheticism and daintiness I left the temple with gratification and fulfillment. Now we were driving back home. While I was enjoying the beauty and richness of Tamil Nadu along the road, we hit a hurdle. By the time we got back about half way to our home, there was a situation where the road had been blocked for some reason and we had to take a detour.

That detour also changed the course of my life that day, what that morning I thought it was going to be a regular normal day!

While we had a few more hours left to reach our house, we ended up passing by a small village. On the streets I saw several wood and stone statues kept outside, which caught my eyes. Such an intricate carving and beautiful workmanship lay on those statues. We pulled over our car and started walking in the street looking at the statues, admiring. After a few minutes, there came a sculptor, a man in late 60’s. I started talking about the statues and asking questions. What types of wood do they use? How long does it take to make one statue? How hard is it to make a statue in stone? How do they preserve the wooden statues from termites or any other insects and bugs? Where do they get the rocks or stones for the statues? What are the tools they are using? How do they sell these statues? And then my last question came.

What is the next level of these arts?

Except for the last question, every other question brought a smile to the sculptor’s face and he started explaining how he makes the statues from scratch. Every step he explained amazed me, especially while he was explaining how much time consuming these statues are and how careful they have to be while working on the detailed carving. Even if one small portion of a statue does not come well or break in the process, they may have to throw the entire wood piece and start from scratch. That made me think how silly I am while I complained my 10 minutes cooking did not turn out as well as I expected and I was complaining and murmuring the next 10 minutes while I was cooking again.

10 minutes of cooking compared to months, sometimes years of carving and sculpting!

His hard work, determination, perfection and dedication brought a huge respect to him. Now when I touch the statues, I cannot express the feeling I had in words. It was a soul touching feeling.

Every portion of the statue that I touched brought a breeze to my heart. What an enthralling workmanship? Ravishing creativity! Enchanting artistry!

And behind all these hiding several hours of hard work.

While all these were already enough to take my breath away we came to the last question.

What is the next level of these arts?

He said, “If you ask just me, I will say nothing. Because I am the only one doing this and will be the last in my generation.”

I asked, “Why are you the last? What about your children?”

He said, “They do not want to do this. Because they watched me spending uncountable time on making these statues and at the end of the day I get a very low income with which I was never able to meet my ends. Hence they decided instead of being a starving sculptor they want to pursue their dreams in different careers. It’s just not my children, my neighbors who are sculptors as well and their children want to become an engineer or a teacher or an information technology employee or a public sector worker..”

Though I appreciate the upcoming generation taking our nation’s economy to the next level by entering into different fields of occupation, increasing the pace of innovation rapidly and being a stepping stone of various technological advances, what about our living national treasure?