Mahendra Potdar, a Bollywood set designer, designed a Shambala-themed pandal
Potdar grew up in Pune and moved to Mumbai in 2012 to work in film art direction. “About 50 people worked on creating the legend, including my Mumbai-based team of artists and technicians with experience ranging from 10 to 15 years.
That curiosity built up,” he said. Detailed production and design followed, with construction beginning about three months before Ganeshotsav,” Potdar told TOI . Potdar said all these elements were constructed at the location. The construction used materials commonly employed in film sets, including thermocol, PoP, acrylic, rubber and wood,” said Potdar. Creating that effect was considerably more difficult than constructing a conventional static set,” said Potdar.
Pune: After four years of research on the mythical realm of Shambala, Bollywood art director and set designer Mahendra Potdar has recreated his interpretation of the legend at a Ganapati pandal in Sadashiv Peth. He read two books about Shambala five years ago. Intrigued by the legend, he spent four years researching the mythical realm through books and podcasts. “Information about the city remains scattered in bits and pieces. People, however, don’t know where and what it is. “I first worked out the ground plan and studied how visitors would move through the space. The entrance leads into a cave-like structure, with the setting gradually revealing Shambala’s mythical world. Seven figures representing the Chiranjivis, including two lions and two snakes, have been created. The biggest technical challenge was positioning the UFO at the centre of the installation. “It has to rotate continuously, requiring the team to engineer a mechanism that could safely sustain the movement inside a crowded pandal.
The process of turning that vision into a physical structure began about nine months before the festival.