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J - Joyful, L - Luxurious, I - Iconic,
N - Novelty, E - Elegance
Our Mission Statement
To protect our legacy
To pass our cultural and natural heritage to future generations
To keep the dying art alive and to shape our history with our culture.
JLine’s 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 & Silks
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?
Will it die with this generation?
It took a few minutes for me to grasp and digest the reality and the truth behind his words.
Then I met a couple other sculptors, and had the same question when they answered the same. At that moment the soul-satisfaction I had at the temple few hours ago disappeared all of a sudden, and I waved my hands with sorrow while leaving.
Now while we were coming back home did I feel the same way, enjoying the beauty of nature. I can strongly say NO.
When I was in 6th grade, I was painting a small hibiscus flower in my drawing book. I colored the flower red and was working on the leaves and stem while my older brother spilled water on it accidently (Was it an accident? Well! He said it was an accident, but I don’t think so :-)) I still remember how upset I was and I could not believe that my painting was gone. I was very hurt and being angry with my brother, I did not speak to him for a couple of days. If I cannot take it easy when a small drawing on a piece of paper, maybe 30 minutes of work, is spoiled, how can I forget and move on when I learned that these gifts are becoming extinct. Though I cannot blame the next generation for not taking these art from their parents, I wished at least someone should attempt to keep these arts alive. “Why shouldn’t I?”
That’s when the journey of JLine began.
How did we evolve?
The only guarantee in life is that things will change. Even us humans, how did we evolve? How many questions are out there regarding human evolution.
We didn’t evolve from apes?
You are actually less than half human?
Darwin wasn’t right about everything?
All of them may not have been answered or answered correctly, but yet we have evolved, in some ways. Likewise, nothing will succeed without an evolution. Humans or technology or business!
We have seen this throughout history.
To be put in simple words, If Digital Camera was found by Kodak or Polaroid, they would not have been disrupted.
Hence we decided to evolve our company, constantly, even if it requires disrupting our self. Because to me evolution means keeping a keen eye on the future.
We shortlisted the ways we can evolve and found two ways left. Find products and then look for clients to buy the product. Or focusing on committing to the clients needs first and then finding the product. Here we were out of the questions since I chose the product first already even before thinking about JLine. Handicrafts, Paintings, Sculptures, and Silks. These are my products. Now we have to evolve.
What can we do so we can differentiate ourselves from others?
How do we make JLine unique in all the world?
There the answers surfaced. Unique, Improvise, Fusion, Innovation
And we mixed this with JLINE
J – JOYFUL
L – LUXURIOUS
I – ICONIC
N – NOVELTY
E – ELEGANCE
Every product, either painting, sculpture, statue, silks all are unique in their own way.
My ‘aha’ moment
Coincidence or miracle, what do I call this? Few days after my visit to the village of sculptors, to attend a meeting I traveled to a place near my hometown. The meeting was arranged in an office located in a public building. Since it was accessible to the public, on the meeting day I saw several people inside the building. Thought they may have a library or any other civic institutions but that was not the case. An art show was conducted in the building hence visitors keep coming. Since I am always in love with art, I wanted to see what form of art they are showcasing. There I saw wooden sculptures. Again!
Is this a coincidence or miracle? I can say this is my ‘aha’ moment. Now I get it. This moment made my ‘JLine’ decision more stronger.
Thus become JLine my breathe and my life.
Who do JLine’s family serve?
To serve is to give someone service or present someone with something. To provide goods and services for customers. That’s what is called serve in an world dictionary.
But for us, we wanted to combine the word serve with protect. Serve and Protect!
Serve the nation by protecting the culture, heritage, tradition, nations living treasure.
Serve the customers by providing culturally competent service.
JLine’s Core Values
Create Beautiful Results: Taj Mahal or a petal of rose, both are beautiful in their own way. One cannot travel to see Taj Mahal when they want but a petal of rose is easy to get. Likewise We cannot give you a Mona lisa, but we can give you an art that is beautiful, precious and most importantly, at an affordable price.
Authenticity: Undoubtful authenticity – Authenticity of our products connects us to our customers and clients. It is the idea that we celebrate all of the nuances that make our product unique. This gives Jline the ability to build a truly dynamic organization and have all successes. Inspires us to genuinely care about our artists, sculptors, customers, culture, heritage and society. Our approach in all that we do is to consider the wider impact; we want to save the natural living treasure.
Authenticity matters in JLine.
Passionate: An intense and passionate zeal breathes in our paintings, sculptures, on every handicrafts we make and forms one of the most remarkable as well as one of the most attractive characteristics of Jline style. We make every product with greater earnestness, deep genuine, heart-felt sincerity and passionate love.
Rejuvenate: Do people understand or enjoy the iconic representation of our culture? Do they show interest in having? The answer is ‘Yes. Many of them do.’ Yet, what makes the art diminishing slowly but surely? And how do we rejuvenate dying art? The first step of Jline, is to put effort in reviving the dying arts, is to create a love for the arts in human beings, to stimulate an understanding of the arts, and to increase the impact on our culture. How does Jline do that? By bringing the art at every customers doorstep by click of few buttons.
Unique – Unique in every way. Jline believes in Uniqueness. Indubitable production of our unequivocal masterpieces describes our uniqueness and that is what distinguishes us from our competitors. Even if there are thousands of art sellers, online stores, artists and sculptors or handicrafts out there, our uniqueness helps us stand out and stay top of our customers’ minds.
Our Motto
Keeping the arts alive and flourishing!
