Last year, several months were put into the creation of the Media Studio's ceiling coffers and tongue and groove boards. Today they're finally being installed. Three karma yogis, Deva, Aditya and Haran, have offered to help the monks and do the complex installation. The wood was taken from trees felled near the monastery, it was then milled, cut, planed and oiled into it's final form. Another team is simultaneously applying the stucco to the building exterior. The first coat is going up, which will be followed by another and then the final colored coat. These two projects are fast creating a complete transformation of the building.

The Nandi Mandapam is the primary thrust of our carving team in Bengaluru, and they are pouring their best skills into it. Today we received these photos of the ceiling stones, just completed in India. 
The mandapam is almost a small temple in front of the larger Iraivan Temple, and it will be the most elaborately carved of Iraivan's stones. In part, this is due to its smaller size, just fifteen feet square, and in part to the new tools that have evolved in just the last few years.
These are the carbide-tipped chisels which not only last longer but because they are sharper and lighter, they give the silpis better control of the magical process of sculpting one of the world's hardest stones--granite. If you ever sit with the silpis during the carving process, you are first impressed with how tedious and slow the process is, requiring almost superhuman patience as the art slowly emerges from the raw rock. 
Looking closer you see something surprising: they are not carving so much as pulverizing the steely stone molecule by molecule. Each blow of the mallet on the chisel removes a tiny bit of dust. Not rock so much as dust, which accumulates near the impact zone and is brushed away every few minutes. 

Today we received this photo of the new carving being made in North India for the Media Studio. It will go near the Gurudeva carving we showed yesterday, on the other side of the stone entry cave. It is of course Ganesha scribing a holy text onto a palm leaf, using the old-style stylus. It is, after all, the Ganapati Kulam's space where all the word devas play, the publications are designed, the videos edited, the website engineered and populated, the artwork orchestrated….you get the idea. Jaya Ganesha!

The monks are working each day on the renovation of the spaces where all of the publications are created, called the Media Studio. This 180 degree panorama shows the Cedar Room on the left and the Waialeale Room on the right. Doors are being hung, vents installed, wiring tweaked and cabinets built.

Satya Palani has joined the team during his stay on Kauai, coming out of 12 years of retirement to use his masterly tile setting skills. We are enormously grateful to Satya for taking care of a corner of expertise that is beyond our abilities.

We also brought the 16 wooden ceiling coffers over, to measure them and get ready for installation next month. The ceiling will transform the space. In the photo you can see one of the coffers with the kolam in place. There will be kolam designs from all parts of India.

Most of you know that the silpis use a simple hammer and a special mild steel chisel to give the temple granite its soft, refined finish. They start with a rough chisel and move through 8 or 10 degrees of refinement, just like a woodworker takes rough sandpaper to begin, the more and more refined.

In this first photo, we see this process at work at our Bengaluru site.

But times do change, and this week we received photos from our site manager, Jiva Rajasankar, showing us a new tool that makes this work much faster. It is a pneumatic device, beautifully adapted by our team to the special need. Of course, it moves the work along much faster, and just in case anyone is wondering, no, it is not being used on Iraivan temple which is only carved by hand.

Here is Jiva's note sent with the photos today:

Aum Sivaya, Paramacharya!

We are now using a compressor driven hand tool that smoothens the larger surface area very much faster. The machine vibrates a lot and the silpi has to hold it tight and guide the machine.

A close up of the tool with crossed patterns which does the smoothening.

The third photo shows the working of the compressor driven tool and the use of the hand chisel side by side. For all  the edges and tricky areas, we still use the hand chisels.

Please take note that this machine is only used for the perimeter wall. Nandi Mandapam is totally hand carved, no comprise whatsoever.

Aum.

Jiva

More today on the progress being made by the four-man team installing our dry wall. They are such concentrated workers, and a great team. From morning to night they never lose focus of the next thing, and they don't even converse among themselves except to get the work done. So you can imagine how efficient they are. A few photos of their work, and the mess they are making in the space!

Today the Media Studio drywall is being installed. A local team is doing this work of transforming the building from one big space into several small ones. This truly is a big step in the process, which completely changes the interior, and moves us from one type of construction to another. The next big projects are to hang the ceiling, finish the doors and bathroom, put up the wallpaper, do the finishing work and cabinetry, and lay the flooring. Comparatively it feels like it's all downhill from here.

Today we received some recent photos from Jiva Rajasankar, the manager of the Iraivan carving site in Bengaluru, India. They are working on the Nandi Mandapam with great energy. Most recently the silpis have finished five of the eight small stone chains, and the first of four elaborate ceiling lotuses (you can see these in the slideshow).

Currently the focus for the media studio is to complete everything that is required for drywall installation. Today the backdoor is being installed, which will reuse the previous door. The monks spent several days refurbishing the door and building the frame and blocking in which it will hang. The insulation began to go in today as well.

Work continues on the peedam that Hanuman will stand atop. As you can see it's a massive stone that's being carved. The rough work is going relatively quickly, after which the detail work can begin.