{"id":158003,"date":"2025-11-02T01:21:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T01:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/158003\/"},"modified":"2025-11-02T01:21:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T01:21:14","slug":"a-long-goodbye-life-sized-silicone-statues-are-helping-families-across-india-mourn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/158003\/","title":{"rendered":"A long goodbye: Life-sized silicone statues are helping families across India mourn"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cWho can predict what form grief will take,\u201d says Subimal Das, 49, a sculptor in Kolkata.<\/p>\n

\"Silicone PREMIUM Silicone sculptures of Samit Dutta\u2019s parents, Arun and Hena Dutta, in Kolkata. <\/p>\n

He has been taking on some unusual commissions lately.<\/p>\n

For 25 years, he says, he largely sculpted celebrities (in hyper-realistic silicone). Mahatma Gandhi for a museum in Patna, Virat Kohli for an amusement park in Haridwar, Rabindranath Tagore for the West Bengal Assembly building.<\/p>\n

Since 2021, business has picked up, with the bulk of it coming from a new direction. Families are approaching him for statues of: a missing son, a wife lost suddenly to the pandemic, a beloved professor.<\/p>\n

He has created about 50 such sculptures in four years, for families from West Bengal, Sikkim, Assam, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. The figures he crafts are often dressed in the clothes of the lost loved one, and eventually positioned to fit into the house they once inhabited. Prices start at \u20b93 lakh.<\/p>\n

Each likeness is first shaped in clay. At this stage, the family is invited to offer feedback.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is important to capture the person\u2019s essence, not just their likeness,\u201d Das explains. This typically involves making adjustments to the eyes, nose, or the crook of a smile.<\/p>\n

MEMENTO MORI<\/b><\/p>\n

\"Gita Gita Bhattacharjee with the likeness of her son, Abhishek, who went missing when he was 28. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe was all I had after I lost my husband at 28. Then I lost him when he was 28,\u201d says Gita Bhattacharjee, 65, who commissioned a sculpture of her missing son Abhishek Bhattacharjee last year, after seeing Das\u2019s work in local news reports.<\/p>\n

The retired labour department employee from Kolkata spent 10 years looking for her son, before she decided to seek some closure. He is now immortalised, and will keep her company as she ages, she says. \u201cIt helps to see this version of him, as my memory slowly falters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, Dr Bipasha Goswami, 30, a veterinary surgeon, and her brother Soumyadeep Goswami, a medical student, commissioned a likeness of their father, in 2022. Nemai Chandra Goswami was a retired professor in Suri, West Bengal, and died of pneumonia, aged 68.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis loss shattered us,\u201d Dr Goswami says. \u201cBut the sense of community we felt, with so much love pouring in for him from his peers and students, has helped us through it. The statue allows us to maintain a continuing bond that photos simply cannot offer.\u201d His students visit his likeness often. Some stay to chat, sharing memories and stories about him.<\/p>\n

The idea for this tribute came after they saw a video online of a young woman from Tamil Nadu who received a bust of a deceased parent as a gift, at her wedding.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the statue in our home, I still get to touch my father\u2019s feet and seek his blessings every time I have a big day ahead of me,\u201d Dr Goswami says.<\/p>\n

MEMORY PROJECTS<\/b><\/p>\n

\"The The Goswami famiy with a silicon statue of Nemai Chandra Goswami, a retired professor in Suri, West Bengal, who died of pneumonia, aged 68. <\/p>\n

In form, these tributes echo practices that first emerged in the early years of affordable photography, in the mid-1800s. In those years, death portraits immortalised a loved one. For these special shoots (often the only photograph ever taken of the person), the deceased was positioned in a favourite chair, or at rest in a bed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith time and technology, our relationship with grief and how we express it evolves,\u201d says clinical psychologist Priyanka Varma of The Thought Co, who has specialised in grief counselling. After photographs, there were home videos. Now, AI bots offer to chat in a deceased person\u2019s voice.<\/p>\n

Turn the clock back and, before photography, there was mourning jewellery, in which locks of hair from a loved one were typically encased in a locket or a ring.<\/p>\n

And before that, as far back as 13,000 years ago, fragments of what were once petals have been found at Palaeolithic gravesites.<\/p>\n

\"A A Victorian-era death portrait (the girl in the centre is deceased). (Wikimedia) <\/p>\n

We have always struggled with mourning and remembrance. \u201cWe strive to preserve memories as they are lost to time, and hyper-realistic statues and digital avatars, enabled by new technology, offer new ways to help us do this,\u201d Varma says.<\/p>\n

It could make letting go that much harder, she points out.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt ought not to become a way to evade reality. This is important,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

STILL LIFE<\/b><\/p>\n

Das says he still thinks about the first such request he received, from a government employee in Kolkata, in the middle of the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Tapas Sandilya had just lost his wife to Covid-19 and was devastated that she died without family near her. As with so many in that terrible time, loved ones had to be kept away.<\/p>\n

Sandilya was still devastated when he approached Das. \u201cDespite his family\u2019s objections, he wanted a likeness of her,\u201d Das says. \u201cHis unwavering conviction moved me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"An An array of mourning jewellery brooches containing hair from a lost loved one. (Wikimedia) <\/p>\n

In Jhargram, West Bengal, a statue of Swarnab Bagchi, who died at 26, sits poised with his guitar. His parents have surrounded his chair with some of his favourite things.<\/p>\n

For Samit Dutta, 49, an advocate at the Calcutta high court, the two statues of his parents mean he wakes up less alone. He lost his mother, Hena Dutta, when he was 18, and his father, Arun Dutta, to a stroke, three years ago. \u201cI find myself sitting in front of them when I am bogged down by a typically tough case,\u201d he says. \u201cIt helps to try to think of what they would say to me if they were here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWho can predict what form grief will take,\u201d says Subimal Das, 49, a sculptor in Kolkata. PREMIUM Silicone…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,362,363,364,366,18,117,2379,91959,19,17,32500,91960,15144,91958],"class_list":{"0":"post-158003","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-htwknd","16":"tag-hyperrealistic-statues","17":"tag-ie","18":"tag-ireland","19":"tag-sculptures","20":"tag-silicone-statues","21":"tag-statue","22":"tag-subimal-das"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115477485170695630","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}