“Tilak Ajoba” gives an audience to Pune, again

PUNE To mark the twin celebrations of Guru Poornima and the birth anniversary of Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak on Friday, a 102-year-old life-sized statue of Tilak was unveiled in its permanent place in the freedom fighter’s own but newly-restored study room housed in Kesari Wadi, Narayan Peth

PUNE To mark the twin celebrations of Guru Poornima and the birth anniversary of Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak on Friday, a 102-year-old life-sized statue of Tilak was unveiled in its permanent place in the freedom fighter’s own but newly-restored study room housed in Kesari Wadi, Narayan Peth. On Tilak’s 100th death anniversary on August 1, the statue will be on display for all in his very own study room.

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Reminiscing about his father and sculptor Keshav Lele who sculpted the statue, Yeshwant Keshav Lele said, “This is the only full-size statue sculpted by the then 18-year-old sculptor Keshav Lele, with Tilak himself sitting as a live model in July 1919 when he was at Sardar Bhavan in Mumbai. The statue was made of Plaster of Paris (PoP) in July 1919 at Sardar Bhavan. That is also where he breathed his last a year later.”

The statue is unique in that it is not in the usual standing pose but in an extremely realistic pose of Tilak in his daily life, sitting in a reclining armchair reading the Kesari (newspaper started by Tilak). The chair on which the statue is seated is almost as old as the sculpture.

Yeshwant Keshav Lele recalled, “My father was a highly accomplished sculptor who specialised in making dioramas of moving statues. He was chosen twice to represent India; once at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, UK, in 1924 and again at the Sesquicentennial International Exposition at Philadelphia, USA, in 1926.”

The Tilak family spent ₹1 crore in restoring their old house using old photographs and other paraphernalia. They employed the services of heritage restoration architect Kiran Kalamdani for the purpose.

Reiterating that this is the only life-sized statue in existence sculpted with Tilak sitting as live model, Mukta Tilak recalled, “The statue took six months with Tilak spending an hour daily to sit in one place. He was very fidgety and would not sit still according to the then photographers. It has captured the very essence of Tilak in its features.”

The statue is special also in that it is almost all that is left of sculptor Keshav Lele’s body of work as all his unique dioramas were destroyed by anti-social elements in the riots that broke out after Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. Keshav Lele died in 1945 just shy of his 44th birthday. Ironically, he died of lung failure due to saturation of the lungs by PoP dust.

Tilak’s statue, affectionately called “Tilak Ajoba” was practically a family member at the Leles’ residence in Dadar, Mumbai. After taking care of “Tilak Ajoba” for 60 years, Keshav Lele’s son, Yeshwant Lele, transported the statue to his daughter Dr Chitra Lele’s home in Pune in 1999 to curb any further damage due to the infamous Mumbai weather. In Pune, it was lovingly restored in 2015 by famous sculptor-restorer, Abhijit Dhondphale.

“I have used fibreglass to restore the torso of the statue while the face, hands, and legs are the original in PoP. It took me almost a month-and-a-half to refurbish and bring it back to Tilak’s original skin colour,” informed Dhondphale.