Interview Times The sound of chisels chipping out at stones has diminished but not blurred away. In this workshop in Lingipur, on the outskirts of Bhubaneshwar, 68-year-old Antaryami Mangaraj is carving out a giant wheel at a brisk pace.
He features a dream to chase. He needs to create up for the misplaced time amid the lockdown and complete his guruji’s mission.
Smitesh Mohapatra too is chasing the same dream. He has taken it upon himself to total a mission that his granddad, eminent sculptor, and Rajya Sabha MP Raghunath Mohapatra, had set out upon before Covid snuffed his life out in May this year —to construct a copy of the Sun Temple in Konark. He named it the Aditya Narayan (another title of the sun) Temple.
Mohapatra, who passed away at the age of 78, had conceived the thought in 2013, tormented by the damage to the 13th-century temple over the centuries. Since then, till he capitulated to the virus, he acquired 100-acre land near Puri, laid the foundation stone, and set up the Raghunath Mohapatra Arts and Makes Foundation that supervises chiseling work and the Aditya Narayan Belie to carry out construction and other vital work.
The copy will be built 30 km from the initial Sun Temple in Konark, between Sakhigopal and Puri, a location chosen by Mohapatra, a Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan awardee whose manifestations incorporate the six-feet-tall graystone statue of the sun god at Central Hall of Parliament and Rajiv Lochan, lotus sculpted on a dark rock at Rajiv Gandhi Samadhi, Vir Bhumi, in Delhi.
