Well, these characters exist but none of them are for real. They are just a few of the cartoon illustrations you will find etched on stones at Sushil Bhasin’s ‘Pebble Gallery’.

Bhasin, 35, is a marketing executive with a consulting firm in the Capital and likes to spend his free time with his ‘‘best friends”, stones.

It all started a few years ago when he was strolling along the banks of the Ganges in Rishikesh on a trip with friends.

“In 2004, I had gone to Rishikesh for an annual visit and picked up a few pebbles. It was then that I thought of doing something with them. So I brought a handful of them home and started painting on them,” he explains.

What started as a hobby soon became an obsession and Bhasin began breathing life into stones. The pebbles became people. He decided to call his collection ‘Sushil on the rocks’. “The decision of which design will be ideal for which style of pebble is taken at a very sub-conscious level. But yes, first I judge the stones, study their dimensions before I get an idea of what best is suited on them,” he says.

His characters are designed to evoke humour and are a comment on the idiosyncrasies of people. So there is a behenji who says, “what, no discount on Gucci?” or two stones engaged in a dialogue where one asks the other, “khaane mein kya hai?” These messages are inscribed with a marker on the stones.

The medium used for painting is markers for straight lines and acrylic and paints for shapes and fillers. As for the stones, Bhasin does not make a pilgrimage to Rishikesh every year to get them; instead he gets them from a dealer on MG Road. “I fill up a jute bag with stones and the man looks at me curiously each time. I have to ensure that the stones are not chipped or have any dirt stains on them since they are hard to remove and spoil the beauty of the designs. For this reason, I avoid taking stones that have been collected in winter since that is when the river is dirtiest,” he says.

So far, Bhasin has made approximately 8,000 pieces of “pebble art” and has sold them in over three separate exhibitions in the Capital. Each piece is priced between Rs 300 and Rs 1,500.

His future plans include setting up an online auction of these works.

“The online auction will be running in another six months. I am also open to supplying my designs to various interior design houses and shops.”

For now, he is content spending time with his “best friends.”