By IANS
New York : A giant sand sculpture of the Taj Mahal in midtown Manhattan has been attracting large crowds.
Created by well-known sand sculptor Sudarsan Pattnaik, this yellow Taj model stands 10 feet tall on a 15 feet square base at the busy Port Authority Bus Station near Time Square.
“It is beautiful and the scale is right,” said Bradley Rubenstein, a Port Authority official who has seen the original marble marvel in Agra.
His companion, Gayatri Devi, a Bharatanatyam dancer, found the attention to detail in the sculpture very impressive.
The sand replica of the marble wonder was unveiled Monday, a day later than planned. Pattnaik ascribed the delay in getting the model ready to hiccups in getting the required 1,500 bags of the right sand.
“We couldn’t face the throngs of people who came on Sunday to view the Taj but had to return disappointed,” Pattnaik told IANS remorsefully.
He said he couldn’t have made his Taj any larger because of structural limitations of the Port Authority building.
India’s Tourism Ministry and Kingfisher Airlines have supported Pattnaik’s project.
Pattnaik had earlier created the Taj in Berlin. “The crowds that came there showed how much people the world over love the Taj Mahal. This disproves the theory that heavy voting from a numerically strong India got Taj into the new list of Seven Wonders of the World,” he said.
Pattnaik, who hails from Orissa, has been included in the Limca Book of Records’ new special volume on 60 Indians who have made a difference.