I love Bombay

So apparently when the Banglore govt.’s idea of putting up God images on walls to prevent people from urinating on them was a grand success, Mumbaikars decided to take a leaf out of their books.

Enter Bombay Wall Project. More about the wall project, and it’s success can be found here, here and here.

The Wall Project, a humble project that started out with a few enthusiastic people, is growing to be a bigger, better project. It was an initiative to add visual elements of colour, form and texture to a space, to make the area more alive and generate a feeling among people who pass by it daily.

Thus far, street art has been Mumbai is restricted to badly painted promotions for local businesses or gruesome posters of B- and C-grade flicks. There is the occasional defacing with a local gang or two hoping to steal some glory for themselves by spray-painting obscene words on school walls and building compounds.

This process allows one to be more observant about the spaces we use and move within and how we can use various art forms in the public sphere to generate an interest in the minds of our daily human lives. The Wall Project in its own way tries to start a conversation, with no political or religious attachments.

Mumbai Wall Project

I love Bombay.

But it isn’t over yet. How can it be?

How can good deeds and Mumbai have a happy ending? Hasn’t anyone learnt anything? It’s not Mumbai, if you do something nice, and it stays nice. The apathy, and callous attitude of people is also what makes Mumbai … Mumbai. It always surfaces … ultimately. It used to bother me earlier, but now it doesn’t. When I see something like this, it always invokes the same reaction. – As my friend said, “Aaamchi Mumbai at it’s best”

Enter Bombay Wall Project – One week Later

Then earlier this evening, we discovered that a different sort of vandalism had happened. Movie posters of Aladin, Canvas and Gair have turned up, pasted over the paintings, less than 24 hours later. I’m rusty on the legalities of these movie advertisements that appear all over the city. All I can say is that Wall Project was a BMC initiative and certainly not meant to be a backdrop for the marketing of Bollywood.

Mumbai Project - One week later

I still love Bombay.

EDIT: I am not calling every Mumbaikar apathetic, and there have been many instances where the spirit of Mumbai has been rock solid, and come to the fore. But there have been equal number of cases where Mumbaiites have displayed absolute ‘blehness’ to other people’s hardwork and misery. Above being one perfect example. To ignore something like this is just wrong

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