Tracy Hills Onam 2024 - Boat story

 

Boat story. We had our first meeting at the Star Cross park. Banerji's drive for a grand and impressive backdrop infused the project from that meeting. He had come in with this blue print that he and Chris had drawn out. There was a touch of grandness and an "all in"ness in everything he said

I had brought in decor items from the koottu onam group that had happened a few weeks back.  Banerji did not want to use it as is, we tried to see if the happy onam circle can be be formed using the koottu decor but that was not working out and that got dropped.

Vipin Vishwanathan was initially not in the decor group. I knew that he was the right person for the job as I had seen the pooja room work that is in progress at the garage. 

Vipin Das, a recent thaaram to join tracy hills had ideas about printing the maveli from walmart.

Starting with that drawing, we estimated how big the vanji needs to be by looking at the cement squares on the park floor, and decided on two 8 X 12 sheets, and Vijesh offered to buy those from Home Depot.

Vijesh, Banerji and myself had gone to Hobby Lobby mainly to get the plastic flowers that would adorn the Happy Onam circle. Banerji was particular about completing the shopping for all the small elements - including the letters for HAPPY ONAM, the background circle etc, also the golden lining for the boat.

Vipin's Boat

The focus quickly shifted to Vipin's garage. Banerji had initially wanted a miniature complete boat. I felt that that would make the vanji look small and instead to have just a thematic where you just see the portion of the boat. That resonated with Vijesh as well and collectively we decided to take that route. 

White tape would mark the curve of the boat. Vipin had his goggles on and he cut along the line using the circular mechanized blade. It doesn't work in six seconds as they show in the ads. The board started chipping a bit. Vipin then tried from the other end. He had to then use axe saw to fix the curves. 

For the second board that needed a straight cut, he had a second mechanized blade in his garage. You walk the board under the blade, just like you see in chicken meat shops. This was the phase where I was in awe of the extent of workshop level tools and accessories a software engineer has in his garage.

Vijesh shopped in two black gloss and one black matt spray paints.  We brought the vanji pieces out in front of the garage, placed on a plastic sheet. Vipin dressed up with his mask and googles and spray painted the boat sheets. Reasonably quick and fast.  

Once the project was ON, Banerji was letting it evolve. Banerji continued to have grand proposals - he wanted to raise the boat, and the maveli for the reason that we did not have a stage, and it would not attract enough attention.  We did not get to do all that as we were short on time. 

With the two main pieces cut, now it was about how the head should look. We googled and discussed and came up with how the curves should be. Vidyuth appeared on the garage inside door, and said it is my dinner time - I am not hungry now, but please don't forget to feed me. 

Vipin is super busy at work as well. We could not find a week day time slot to work on the head. Instead what we got was that Vipin made the head himself. 

Next up is how to stand the boat. There were multiple discussions on what kind of stand to make.  I reached out to Anish who had done similar work for Koottu Onam last year, and he shared that he had used the L Shaped support that was used for the backdrop, whose items I had borrowed from Koottu group for a potential re-use. 

This was seen as a good option for supporting the maveli. As luck would have it, Mithun was able to borrow a fully made maveli from one of his Onam functions for this year. This meant that Vipin Das did not have to print the Maveli poster, nor worry about the stand work. 

The idea was to have Vipin make a stand.  That sounded like too much work. As the team was open to ideas, I suggested that we could place something heavy behind the vanji to rest against it. Manu mentioned that he had a stool that we could use for this purpose, but also expressed the concern that the vanji would not stand erect if we do that. That is where the magnets came in. Magnets would be fixed on the boat and they would help keep the boat erect.  The design detailing was so complete that we even had magnets placed to join the two boat pieces together. 

Now, the gold lining on the boat.  Curving the lining along the boat was not looking good. We thought about cutting it, and having two pieces. Finally, we decided on not cutting, and instead adding folds to accommodate the curves. We were careful about keeping the folds equidistant on the straight section as well. Vijesh brought in brass nails for the job. I fell in love with how authentic they made the boat look, but it was not easy to get the nails in. So we switched to staples - it is all there in the shop already. Stapled the lining to perfection. 

The head piece had some super glue on it, which did not look good. So the gold lining crossed over to hide it. The head piece needs more gold - so we thought we will have four golden circles - a bigger coin, quarter,  dime, nickel. On that day, I somehow was on a perfection mode - I drew circles around the coins - Mahesh and Vijesh cut the circles along those pencil lines, these were then stuck on to double sided tapes,  circles cut from the tape and placed on the boat. 

While the boat work was going on here, Mithun and Vipin Das had completed the HAPPY ONAM circle. Banerji's desire of having thick layer of flowers was met head-on. The green back drop was re-used from the Koott Onam. 

Yesterday was the Onam celebration at Tracy Hills 2024. Rest of the group came in and setup the back drop, and placed all the elements together. 

And that, my friend, is how this picture was taken.  This was a totally eye opening experience for me. I had no clue about the level of work that goes behind these backdrops. A casual "that looks great/nice" is where I was last month.