Growing Sheru before Games

How about a green twist to Sheru, our mascot for the 2010 Commonwealth Games? An eight-feet-tall statue of the tiger is being done with foliage using an art form known as mosaic culture, reports HT Correspondents.

How about a green twist to Sheru, our mascot for the 2010 Commonwealth Games?

HT Image

An eight-feet-tall statue of the tiger is being done with foliage using an art form known as mosaic culture.

It is a popular art form in Japan.

The horticulture department of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), the largest civic body after Tokyo, is working on the project.

Officials of the civic body even went to Japan last month for a five-day training programme, especially to craft Sheru out of different plants.

“We wanted a natural logo for the Games and decided on mosaic culture,” said MCD Commissioner K.S. Mehra. “We will display the statue at the Gandhi Jayanti fair on October 2 to see public reaction.”

The foliage would be grown on an iron structure of the tiger. A mixture of soil, manure made of leaf and neem (medicinal plant) cake will be used on the iron mesh. Naphthalene will be used to kill the germs. The plants of different colours, cultured or grown in a nursery, will then be transferred on this frame.

The statue — to cost anything between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 1.5 lakh — will take about a week to be ready.

If the sample statue is approved by the civic agency's high powered standing committee, it will be placed at the Games village and venues, approach roads to the venues, traffic islands, parks and railway stations.

The civic body is growing some plants in its nurseries, but some may be brought all the way from Japan.

“To get the exact colour combination of Sheru, we might have to import certain plants which are readily available in Japan,” said a senior MCD official who did not want to be named.