LUDHIANA: A gold medalist throughout his three years of the sculpture course in Punjabi University, Harminder Singh Boparai is fired with unflagging enthusiasm, and ambition ' to do his bit to immortalise the contributions of Sikh gurus. Come Baisakhi, and he will gift seven cannons he sculpted to the Katana Sahib Gurdwara.
Katana Sahib Gurdwara
A resident of Ghudani Kalan, on the outskirts of Ludhiana, Harminder, 31, is a sculpture artist and an art teacher in Sat Paul Mittal School. He has sculpted all the seven cannons which will be gifted to the gurdwara on Wednesday. TOI spoke to him on Tuesday, asking him about difficulties he faced during the five months of his cannon-making.
'I have been working on them for the past five months and faced many difficulties during this period. But, I did not stop. There have been days when I've worked day and night, just to bring perfection into my works,' he admitted.
All these months, Harminder has worked diligently at his farmhouse, using three basic ingredients of steel, wood and fibre glass. 'I have prepared all these cannons in my farmhouse because I could not have done it at my home. To work on them, I needed a lot of space,' he said.
While he prepared fibre glass himself and purchased steel from the market, the gurdwara trust provided him wood for the sculptures. 'I was a kind of 'one man army', doing all the work and succeeding in my endeavor because of the blessings of my God,' he said.
The devout young man has been a sculpture artist for the last six years and has taken part in many exhibitions. Since 2007, he has been participating in all India art exhibition. 'Getting an entry into this exhibition is not an easy task, as selection is tough,' he said.
To his credit, he has prepared around 250 sculptures and gifted some of his works to animal rights activist Maneka Gandhi, Punjabi singer Gurdas Mann and many others celebrities.
His dream, Harminder reveals, was to make a group of peacocks by using scrap material.