Tiruchi: The newly constructed cathedral of Tiruchi, Tamil Nadu, has made history with the execution of a huge relief depicting Jesus at prayer.

The mural, approximately 75 feet in width and 23 feet in height, is fixed on the wall above the choir-loft in the balcony inside the church, over the main entrance of the cathedral.

“It is one of the biggest reliefs in church art executed anywhere in India,” says Kolkata-based Director of Church Art Subrata Ganguly who supervised the giant piece of art.

The scene is of Jesus at prayer – “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed” (Mark 1:35).

“The time depicted is of dawn, so lot of light and shadow effect is shown in the work with minute details of Jesus figure and of the landscape. The rocks are projected very clearly. The overall finish style is realistic with high relief work of 18 to 20 inches projecting out of the base finished in multicolor shows the tonal color effect of the time of the day,” Ganguly explains.

Built at a cost of 130 million rupees since August 2011, the new cathedral was consecrated on May 3 at a massive ceremony presided over by Archbishop George Antonysamy of Chennai along with Bishop Antony Devotta of Tiruchi and a huge gathering of dignitaries and faithful.

The cathedral is dedicated to Our Mother of Good Health – popularly called Arockia Annai by the local people.

Ganguly runs Church Art, a firm that designs new churches and renovates existing ones to give them a strong local flavor.

“We have worked in all states and almost 170 dioceses in the country,” Ganguly says proudly.

“In the case of new churches, we formalize a concept after intensive discussions with the local diocese or religious congregation, and then work with a local architect to give the concept a concrete shape on the drawing board. Next, we work with the contractor to ensure proper construction. After that, we start working on the interiors and various other objects like the pulpit, the altar, murals, windows and various other objects,” Ganguly says detailing the procedure he follows.

“With old or existing churches, too, we follow a similar routine. All the moveable ‘inculturated’ objects, including murals and statues, are made at my workshop in Kolkata and transported to the respective sites. Big objects like giant or large size statues are transported in knocked-down form and then reassembled at the site,” Ganguly adds.

“The requirements for an inculturated church or seminary in Northeast India are very different from those at Ambapara in Rajasthan’s Udaipur,” explains Ganguly citing examples of his work.

“At a seminary near Shillong, Meghalaya, for instance, Jesus is shown in a mural standing under a pine tree with people in Khasi and Garo headgear around him.”

At Ambapara, Jesus is portrayed as a Bhil tribal after our team studied and researched extensively on the Bhils. We always do this before every such project, to get an accurate idea of local customs, traditions and culture,” Ganguly adds.

Tiruchi cathedral

Other remarkable specimens of Ganguly’s studio creations installed around the country include Jesus sitting cross-legged on a lotus (installed in a church in Hyderabad), or Jesus emerging after a purifying bath in the Ganges with temples on the riverbanks (in a mural in a Haridwar church), or rendered as a typical Bastar tribal priest surrounded by tribal women at a church at Bhopal.

At a church in Jhansi, scenes from Christ’s life are presented in a set of 40 paintings which has human and animal characters that leap straight out of Amar Chitra Katha and Panchatantra comics.

“We’ve installed similar panels in many churches and the feedback has been very good. We’re getting requests to make more such panels and murals, which show biblical characters in Indian forms, from various churches, seminaries and Christian institutions all across the country,” says Ganguly.

Church Art is a unit of Lokenath Engineering, Kolkata, engaged in designing, manufacturing various items required in churches and place of worship under patronage, guidance, love and support of different archbishops, bishops, priests and nuns from all over India and abroad.