Artist-sculptor C.B. Jinan and his team are racing against time to get ready floats for Saturday’s Onam pageantry that marks the conclusion of the State-sponsored Onam celebrations.
Mr. Jinan is giving shape to 12 floats this year, including those for Kerala Tourism, Kerala Tourism Development Corporation (KTDC), Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (VACB), Social Justice Department, and Kudumbasree.
With diverse themes, the floats will aim at depicting the mission, work, and achievements of the departments concerned.
The float of Kerala Tourism, for instance, focusses on Jatayupara, known as the Jatayu Nature Park, at Chadayamangalam in Kollam district, a venture of the Tourism Department and film-maker and scultor Rajiv Anchal. The KTDC float tries to highlight the corporation’s presence across the State, from the beaches to the hills. The VACB float has corruption-free Kerala as its theme. It depicts an eagle sitting atop a cabin to keep a close eye on any bid to take bribes. On one side is Maveli, who signifies the prosperity that the State may attain if corruption is given the boot.
The Kudumbasree float depicts members from the transgender community getting employment with the Kochi Metro, a first in the country.
Though he had crafted as many as 18 floats for the pageantry a few years ago, 12 is still a huge number and the challenges involved many, right from submission of designs to getting approval and incorporating suggestions.
Work on almost all the floats is over at Mr. Jinan’s studio in Balaramapuram. His partner Binu Haridas, brother C.B. Jigish, and a team of 30 artists have put in long hours to get the floats rolling, especially as they get just over two weeks to bring the designs to fruition. The under-construction floats are kept under a dome to protect them from rain.
On Friday, the floats will be transported to the city. For that, arrangements such as trucks, generators, and transportation have to be taken care of, and the next day, they will have to be correctly positioned in the pageantry.
He has also tried to adhere to the green protocol and replaced the flex boards used on the floats for displaying department names and captions with cloth banners. For now, Mr. Jinan is looking forward to Saturday, and what rewards it brings him.