India, Nov. 1 -- "Who can predict what form grief will take," says Subimal Das, 49, a sculptor in Kolkata.

He has been taking on some unusual commissions lately.

For 25 years, he says, he largely sculpted celebrities (in hyper-realistic silicone). Mahatma Gandhi for a museum in Patna, Virat Kohli for an amusement park in Haridwar, Rabindranath Tagore for the West Bengal Assembly building.

Since 2021, business has picked up, with the bulk of it coming from a new direction. Families are approaching him for statues of: a missing son, a wife lost suddenly to the pandemic, a beloved professor.

He has created about 50 such sculptures in four years, for families from West Bengal, Sikkim, Assam, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. The figures h...