"The world is cracked in half, the rift smokes, and blood flows — there is war between the good and the evil..." This cheerful chorus comes from the song of the Russian band "Umaturman", which ends the film "Night Watch". It describes the core of any conflict accurately — the global confrontation of the world powers, seeing universal Evil in each other, as well as the battle of a much smaller scale, happening somewhere in the kitchen every night. Tension between poles or opposites is the main driving force of existence. Take any novel or movie, the plot always tells us about the hero and his alter ego...

Indian Ramayana is no exception. The main conflict of this poem is that Prince Rama must win the ten-headed and twenty-armed demon Ravana (it reminds of something... why not our Russian and the people's favourite dragon, Zmey Gorynych) who stole beloved wife of Rama named Sita. The King of Birds — the great hawk Jatayu — comes to help the prince. However, the insidious and long-living demon Ravana does not want to give beautiful Sita back and injures Jatayu. The winged semi-God falls on the stone peak, towering over Chadayamangalam village. There Ravana finds him, and kills the hawk, cutting off its wing. Since then, the one-winged hawk Jatayu is considered the first creature to stand up for Indian women! The title of defender was awarded to him posthumously... Here is such a sad story!

At the top of the very mountain where the great King of Birds died, until recently, there was a temple in which the villagers gathered to pray. But not so long ago the authorities decided to immortalize the deed of Jatayu and asked the famous Indian sculptor and Bollywood film director Rajiv Anchal to "sculpt" the bird and design a plan for natural park. So he did that, especially because he always wanted to bring the sculpture of the legendary hawk to life. The work began in 2011, and in March 2018, the construction of the complex was almost completed and tourists got access to the Park.

The central figure of the Park, "nestled" at an altitude of 305 meters above the sea level, and gave it its name, became the world's largest sculpture of a bird — the image of a one-winged hawk Jatayu that is as high as a seven-storey house (21 meters). The stone giant is 61 meters high, 48 meters wide, and the inside if the bird has a super-modern amusement park, including a digital museum and 6 projection theaters, where you can see with your own eyes the epoch-making battle between Jatayu and Ravana.

The legendary semi-God hawk is made of special RCC compacted concrete, and the claws are made of stainless steel. A staircase leads to the eyes of the hawk, it offers a magnificent panoramic view of the surrounding landscape, if you try hard, you can even see the Arabian sea. The Park covers 38 km, and you can play paintball, shoot with archery or air weapons, ride bikes and all-terrain vehicles there.

The creator of the largest ornithological sculpture in the world admits that he was inspired by the Statue of Liberty, and is afraid that devout Indians may turn the cultural symbol, he created, into a religious monument. However, the sculptor wanted the work to become a cultural multi-confessional symbol. "Jatayu died, protecting a woman's honor and that is what the sculpture means," explains his plan Rajiv Anchal.

By the way, the Jatayu Park hosts annual craft fairs, which attract hand-made artisans from all over India. So the hawk Jatayu can be considered the patron of the Indian Livemaster :))