Othavadai Street in Mamallapuram (also famous as Mahabalipuram) is typical of any tourist destination, lined with hotels, restaurants and countless shops for artefacts. But turn left into Thirukkula Street and you find a shop that is anything but typical — Temple Surfboards.
A common enough sight in coastal Europe or Australia, where the waves support surfing, a shop like this in Mamallapuram is a first in many ways.
Set up by Australian Dave (who goes by his first name alone), who initially came to this tourist town on the Coromandel Coast near Chennai in 2007, Temple Surfboards is among the few stores in the world that sell surfboards made by hand.
“In China, for instance, surfboards are made by people who don’t know surfing, or have never seen the sea. Making one by hand is an art, and each board is customised to the needs of the buyer. It is not just bought off the rack,” says the 37-year-old Dave.
Temple Surfboards relies heavily on the craftsmanship of Santhosh, a former fisherman and sculptor, who was spotted by Dave on the beaches of Mamallapuram.
Kai Jacobsen, a tourist from Jersey (an island in the English Channel), has been in Mamallapuram for two weeks now and is shopping at Temple Surfboards. “Here, I can actually watch my surfboard being made. And it feels good that it is being made by someone who surfs and shares the passion,” he says.
Techie on the waves
Sydney-born Dave was introduced to surfing when he was just three, as the norm in his family was to “start swimming as soon as you walk”. He grew up and became an IT engineer, but his passion for surfing stayed with him and he even learnt to make surfboards.
In 2007 his job brought him to Chennai, and within a month he had headed to Mamallapuram after hearing from friends that the waves there were good for surfing.
“But I couldn’t get a surfboard,” he recounts.
The sight of other surfers in this historical seaside town, popular with local and foreign tourists, gave him the idea of importing the boards. The cost proved prohibitive though. A surfboard priced A$500 in Australia would cost as much as A$800 by the time it landed in India. “It was too expensive for local people,” says
Dave had by then started a scuba diving venture called Temple Adventures in Puducherry with his friends.
Early in 2014, he decided to set up a surfboard-making unit in Mamallapuram after training Mumu (who later branched off on his own) and Santhosh. “He (Dave) came home to convince my parents that there was a career in making surfboards,” says Santhosh, who can now make one surfboard in a day.
The shape of surfing
The Temple Surfboards store doubles as a workshop. At the entrance, a few broken and second-hand surfboards have been lined up for repair. Inside you find foam blanks in various sizes, which have been imported from Australia. These blanks are given shape (according to the buyer’s requirement) by Santhosh in a smaller room on the right. While the bigger surfboards are for the casual surfer, the smaller ones are suited for making manoeuvres and thus cater to the serious surfer.
On the second floor, the shaped blanks are coated with resin and fibreglass cloth. Next, each blank gets its own distinctive design based on the customer’s specifications.
Vishnu Kumar Janakiraman, the latest addition to the outlet’s six-member team, shows a new surfboard decorated with a kolam design, the traditional floor patterns made with rice flour or chalk powder across Tamil Nadu. “A basic model of surfboard costs ₹24,000,” says Janakiraman, who had studied in Finland and worked in Mongolia before discovering his passion for surfing in Mamallapuram. “The only condition for anyone working in Temple Surfboards is that they have to be a surfer,” he says.
With their shared passion, the team can be regularly found spending the mornings surfing and the rest of the day in making surfboards. “Surfing makes you connect with nature. You are humbled… it will smash you if you make a wrong move. It doesn’t differentiate between rich or poor,” says Dave. Back in 2011, he had launched a surfing competition in Mamallapuram. “More than 100 people showed up for it. Today competitions are held in Puducherry, Goa, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. The community is growing,” says Janakiraman.
Still, Dave knows it is a long way before his business can scale up. “This is just one-year-old. I expect to break even soon. Then probably we can look at opening outlets in other parts of the country,” he says. The Australian continues his IT work (to support his surfing interest and business) and divides each year between India and his workplaces in Australia and the UK. Along the way, he wants to train more Santhoshs to surf the waves for their passion and livelihood.