April, 2020 – Amid lockdown with no access to any junk-yards, scrap warehouses and my local vendors I turned inward, opening my closet to rediscover fragments I had collected over years. Bits of metal, broken toys, forgotten odds and ends objects waiting for a second life. The same time when we all were binge watching TV shows with barely any options left then doom scrolling.
I tried with all possible object that I could gather and cleverly place on a coffee tray. You can easily notice a tiny plastic toy-tanks with few miniature figures of humans collected from some sales office of a real estate firm where they had put a miniature buildings for display. The big-idea was to create a short-film using some selective miniature artworks created in past years – which Included Victory Talkies, few vintage bikes etc
This miniature set was created was born during the stillness of the lockdown. Perhaps it could be due to the hangover of watching war dramas like ‘Band of Brother’ and Saving Pvt Ryan etc triggered this idea of creating a tiny set depicting this cold scene of war tank with few soldiers planning around it in a chilling weather with a foot long snow all over the terrain.
This whole idea is inspired by the making of old English film like ET, Star Wars, which I grew watching on video – cassettes.
For some reasons – I couldn’t finalise the editing of this 2min short films and eventually forgot entirely about it!
Below are few stills from the Short-film – Capre Diem
Cut away, October 2025 :
Maj Gen Rajesh Kundra, AVSM, SM (Retd.) decorated Indian Army veteran who has dedicated 38 years of distinguished service in olive green. From commanding at icy frontiers at 18,000 feet to leading men in life-and-death combat scenarios,
The Himalayan winds, midnight ambushes and high-altitude operations taught him lessons beyond military strategy: how to lead under uncertainty, build trust in chaos, and transform setbacks into strategic victories. This was the theme – on which Maj Gen, delivered his TED talk at Nagpur and I was among one of the speakers sharing the forum.
Climax : What turned out to be a complete co-incident was – during the rehearsals while each of the speakers were
busy preparing the same day of the occasion just few hour before getting on the stage as per the suggested sequence order.
Mr Rajesh Kundra just noticed the miniature – image of the tank and being mindful about the theme, requested me to share this so it can appear on the screen as it completely resonated with his story. What could be any better than this opportunity where my miniature artwork was used as a reference which completely synced with the narrative!
Kudos to the organising team and the crew of TEDx Nagpur, who were so spontaneous to accommodate this picture on the run-time in just 2 minutes or so with few WhatsApp exchanges this was diligently executed
My take-away was none from the crown ever noticed – that the image in the back-drop was a miniature perhaps few may have figured out later while I presented my story with series of other artworks
