Dinesh Kumar, manager, Cosmetics Department, Scope Ingredients, Egmore, dedicates two hours of his day to making beautiful models out of matchsticks. He has been practising the art for almost a decade now.
Through his models, he wants to send out a message that the little sticks that can burn or destroy things can also be used to create some objects, as amazing as his models of Kerala house boats, the Titanic , Charminar, Gateway of India, a church in Italy and so on. His most recent work is a model of Chennai Central Station. His first work was a model of a temple in his native Kerala. He chooses beautiful and unique architectural marvels to be replicated as matchstick models.
Each model takes him about four to eight months to make; the Titanic , which is made using 50,000 matchsticks sourced from Sivakasi, took him the longest time.
One of his models of the Sabrimalai temple rests at the Iyyappan Temple in Mahalingapuram. His aim is to make it to the Guinness Book of Records.
