Nek Chand's eighth wonder on foreign soil

Chandigarh, May 7: Renowned artist Nek Chand, who earned acclaim in the world by turning scrap into sculpture, has created yet another Rock Garden--in Switzerland this time, his eighth creation on foreign soil.

At a ripe age of 82, Mr Nek Chand, who recently returned from Lausanne in Switzerland, shows no signs of tiredness as he sits in the studio of his world famous Rock Garden here and broods over plans to improve it.

Before his Swiss venture, he has already set up seven Rock Gardens in foreign countries--two in the US (Washington DC and Sheboygon, Wisconsin), two in Germany (Berlin and Byruth University), one each in France (Paris), UK (London) and Spain (Madrid).

''No I don't feel tired. I am mostly busy in work and I enjoy it,'' says the octagenarian artist who still has verve and vitality in him.

And he is again ready for a trip to London soon as the Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan there has invited him for an exhibition of his artworks.

Strangely enough, as his art work advances and expands in the world, India has failed to optimally utilise his extraordinary vision that created sculpture from natural stones and waste materialslike broken bangles, corroded wires, used metal sheets, bycycle parts, abandoned tyres and tubes.

The country can just boast of the one and only Rock Garden in the City Beautiful which was opened for the public way back in 1976. Working as a Road Inspector in PWD in Chandigarh, he had privately and secretly worked for about 17 years in a jungle combining stones and waste material to make fantastic figures before it was discovered by the UT administration in 1975.

In India, Mr Nek Chand says, some efforts were made in the past to set up Rock Gardens in Delhi, Gujarat and Kerala but none of them came to fruition due to the lack of interest in the officialdom. In Delhi, 200 acres of land were allotted for a Rock Garden project in a forest near Jawaharlal Nehru University and he had started work on it. The project was abandoned after the then DDA Chairman was transferred.

The other projects at Rajkot in Gujarat and Malappuram dam in Palghat district of Kerala also met a similar fate due to the transfer of officails who initiated them.

But all this does not make him sad. ''Why should I feel bad about it. If somebody is interested in my work he is welcome. If someone else is not, it's alright,'' he says in an unassuming tone.

And he shows you a book titled 'Nek Chand's Outsider Art' authored by Lucienne Peiry and Philippe Lespinass which was published in Switzerland last year.

As you sit back and flip through the book later, the preface makes a rather valid point: ''At last, a book on Nek Chand and his garden. It goes without saying that Nek Chand is a first-rate artist and indeed his extraordinary, universal creation has long appreciated by an Indian public that is willing to wait patiently in line to visit his park. Would the wait have been so long for a publication on a European or North American artist? We have our doubts.''

UNI