Colourful tableaux on Republic Day Parade attract people from across the country every year and the spectacular and awe-inspiring tableau that draws the maximum applause is that of CPWD –Horticulture tableau. The tableau is entirely made up of flowers, painstakingly pinned to give the most exquisite depiction. And the person behind creating such wonderful masterpiece is Saphal Mankapure. This year the
CPWD tableau with the theme ‘Clean India Green India,’ got special prize. This is another feather on Saphal’s cap as he got award for tenth consecutive year.
Saphal has done BFA and his favourite medium is water colours. He has held many exhibitions at various places. He also did a course in photography and
presently works as a professional freelance photographer specializing in industry and product photography. He has been conferred with Sahitya Kala Parishad award in 1990 for his photograph `Innocent Dream’. He has held photography exhibitions all over India, and has won many laurels too. Saphal has also designed a number of tableaux for different states and departments. Saphal has been individually handling the conceptualization, design and development of tableau for CPWD
since 1999. He has his own team of carpenters, welders, painters and other workmen. He even provides the background music according to the theme. According to Saphal, preparing a Tableau of flowers is an intrinsic affair requiring foresight and imagination. The delicateness of flowers limits the artist’s flow of imagination to only certain themes that can capture the splendour of flowers and can be well depicted in colours of most available flowers. According to Saphal, making of the base of the tableau is a lengthy process and it is on this base
fresh flowers are pinned. This part is done only on the 25th of January, which enables the flowers to retain their freshness. Thus it is the only tableau that does not participate in the full dress rehearsal. Giving the final touches to the tableau requires around 1000 workers who segregate the flowers according to colour and size and then each flower is individually pinned to the moss grass.
Flowers are bought in quintals from different states. Saphal says that the process zeroing on theme for next tableau starts from June and thus he is creatively busy most of the time. Saphal is still passionate about painting and says he would like to seriously paint again in near future.

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Swati Khanwalkar,
Radio Dwarka,
India's First Online Community Radio,
Wednesday, March 8, 2017