According to Japanese folklore, a crane lives for a 1,000 years; and if you fold a 1,000 origami cranes in a year, you'll be granted a wish. Today, this age-old craft is no longer child's play. It's a clever tool used across art, science, technology, space exploration, architecture and even fashion. For Mumbai-based origami artiste, Himanshu Agrawal, it's been a lifelong hobby of patience and discovery. "On my 10th birthday, my uncle gave me a book on paper airplanes. I started to like how paper behaved, and when I discovered there were 25 different designs that could all be made from a single sheet of paper, it excited me!" he reminisces, adding, "I would keep folding over and again, though, funnily, I didn't even know it was called origami back then. It's been 31 years since."'

Agrawal, who made it to The Limca National Record in 2011 for constructing the tallest origami dinosaur at 30 feet (took three days to complete in an airplane hangar), his career has seen him making paper sculptures for Hermès, Lacoste, MTV, Lexus and Audi, along with showcasing installations at art shows, embassies and educational institutions. "I'm always curious with how far we can go with paper. The first sculpture I made was a 20-foot-tall giraffe in 2009 in IIT Mumbai for the Techfest, to give the students an idea of how things can be folded, ways to get the right proportions and hide the paper so that only the parts you want to see are visible. It's similar to making a blueprint on paper." Agrawal says, pursuing origami is similar to taking up a musical instrument—when someone plays, they make it look effortless, but in reality, it takes a long time and discipline to learn.