John Abraham’s love for exotic automobiles is no secret, and it’s something we’ve been able to showcase at Autocar multiple times. Like that time when he shared his hot new Lamborghini with our viewers all those years back, or more recently, when he spoke about his love for automobiles on our podcast.
It’s that passion that led to the creation of this project. Essentially, John had accumulated a bunch of beautiful bike and car parts over the years, and he wanted to do something special with them. That’s where renowned artist ArzanKhambatta came in. Based in Mumbai, Arzan has dedicated the last four decades of his life to art and sculpture, and he has a particular fondness for working with metal. So, he was the perfect person to turn these individual parts into a collective masterpiece.
Once Arzan took a look at all the parts John had collected, the ideas immediately began to form. After all, this is the kind of project that draws to the roots of Arzan’s artistic journey, which began when he started experimenting with scrap metal all the way back in 1982. While he and John were going over the various pieces, he pointed out that a lot of the pieces here were so sculptural on their own that you could just mount them on a stand, and that would be enough! But Arzan knew what John had in mind, so the parts were carefully shipped to his studio, where he could truly begin the creative process.
As for John, he couldn’t wait to see what Arzan would come up with. “I really don’t know how he’s going to put it together. But knowing Arzan, he’s going to create something that’s absolutely spectacular, and because it involves motorcycle parts, I have a feeling that whatever we’re going to get out is going to be really soulful and beautiful.”
After giving Arzan some time to get the creative juices flowing, we visited him in his studio and got to see the sculpture slowly taking shape. At this point, he had sketched out his initial plan and then spent a lot of time pondering how it would all piece together.
As the overall shape materialised in his mind, a structure was slowly created until he ended up with the final result – a genuinely dynamic and eye-catching piece of art.
Clearly, this was a special project for Arzan as well, “I completely enjoyed the process because it took me back to my childhood days of making ‘scraptures’ – that’s what I called them because I used to make them out of scrap. So many parts came together here, and since these forms are so powerful, the whole sculpture came out powerful. That’s why I call it Shakti.”
With the sculpture carefully transported back to John’s studio garage, the actor finally got to see the end result of a nearly two-year process, and he absolutely loved it. “I imagined something close to this because I thought it was going to be a Transformers sort of thing, but I didn’t visualise how Arzan conceptualised things like the face, moustache, the hand and the shield, so that’s fantastic. I’m blown away by it.”
The essence of this project is that it captures numerous stories from John’s past, and while some of those bikes and cars may have moved on, he will always have Shakti as a reminder. He summed it up beautifully, “All I’ve done is battle all my life, to prove a point all my life, to fight every day, just to belong. And Shakti is now going to give me that inspiration to stay there and fight!”
