Graffiti on my wall

Wandering through the alleys of Old Bandra in Mumbai, Anand Sankar finds an exciting but novel reclamation underway.

Irub my eyes in bewilderment — are those zebras on a Mumbai street? As the sunlight filters through the trees and buildings, I realise what I’m seeing is no less astounding. They are indeed zebras, but they’re painted across an entire wall, alien but also playful, colourful. Elsewhere, a school of fish swims across another wall, Warholesque faces repeat themselves on the façade of someone’s home, and burlesque alphabets form words that decorate rather than desecrate this Mumbai suburb.

In truth, I shouldn’t be so astounded. After all, I’ve come looking for this graffiti in the warren of alleys that makes up Old Bandra. But distracted by errant speeding autorickshaws trying to run over my toes, and avoiding the crowds, I haven’t realised that I’m there. The works of art that make up this suburb are part of an experiment in urban renewal through what was once considered a form of counter-culture. “Yeh chokra chokri log paint karta hai,” a passer-by attempts to explain.

But I know already. I’ve spoken to the “artists” over the telephone, read about The Wall Project on the internet. And now, through the patterns, I begin to discern typography in vivid green, yellow, pink, orange, blue and red. The blitzkrieg of colour winds down one lane, up another road, and across lanes and backroads. Political graffiti has always existed in India, but now graffiti as art has found a firm rooting with this “project” in India.

From amidst a wall of colour, a window opens and I am beckoned inside No 43, Chapel Road. “Have a cup of tea,” implore the Shahs, Mr and Mrs, old but still hospitable. I learn soon enough that offering tea and conversation to strangers is a Bandra habit. “I have been living here for over 40 years,” Mr Shah says over the cup of promised tea.

“When I moved here, the ocean lapped at the end of this street. It was a fishing community. Then the reclamation of the sea-bed happened and today, not more than 50 per cent of the original residents live here,” he says, adding with a pause, “It is nice, these paintings, something fresh.”

The Shahs recommend meeting Joahaz of the Vegas family (who has an aquarium breeding exotic fish in emptied-out light bulbs). “The boy is always with the people who paint,” Mr Shah says. Joahaz isn’t difficult to find, and another cup of tea, at the hole-in-the-wall Dukes, leads to the genesis of The Wall Project.

Though only about a year old, urban legend, it seems, has it that one resident finally having had her fill of the peeling paint on the walls decided to do something about it. This was Dhanya Pilo, a filmmaker who, in turn, maintains that it was only her attempt to beat boredom rather than a thought-out plan that led to the suburb getting a lick of paint via its unusual graffiti.

Pilo bought cans of paint and the first splashes lit up the façade of her home/studio — with the reluctant consent of her landlord. Soon, text messages went out to friends to bring more paint and join in whenever possible — over weekends, lunch, tea and, even, sometimes, after dark. The response to the first wall, it seems, was enough for the community to volunteer more walls, and to convince the reluctant there were always people like Joahaz. Here was a spectacle designed to entertain, especially when the group executed ideas such as painting zebras on a wall in the night, ingeniously accomplished by projecting the image on to the wall using a projector and painting over it.

“It didn’t start as a ‘project’, but it’s okay if it is called that now,” says Aviral Saxena, one the earliest artists. “It soon became about meeting people. I have met so many people while painting — designers, businessmen, IT people...” says Nisha Jacob. Today the project claims almost a thousand eyes following it on Facebook, while those who’re actually doing the painting number close to 50. And the artists hope that social networking will help the idea to be replicated elsewhere too.

You can find multiple styles on the walls — typography, stencilling, freestyle drawing, caricaturing and geometric symbolism. Even local businesses soon offered their downed shutters for space. “We try to depict an aspect of the people who occupy that space. If you see Joahaz’s house, his wall has a caricature of his dad and a cat, because he feeds a lot of alley cats. Then there is the tattoo store, the barber shop, the tailor...” murmurs Nitya Amarnath.

But Pilo and her group don’t like their work to be referred to as graffiti, preferring instead to call it a “public expression of ideas”. They feel graffiti hasn’t escaped negativism, as apparent in European and American law where graffiti without consent is illegal, and is only a small part of visual art. They say their work resonates with positive energy. But it is said that graffiti’s meaning originates from painting spaces without consent. The usage broadened, according to Wikipedia, when it was accepted as an art form and became “a name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property”.

“We hope these walls will bring in a renewed sense of belonging,” says Nitya. “A lot of the old houses have been torn down by developers. Old Bandra should not lose its character. This is a neighbourhood which has managed to accept and assimilate complete strangers, and has consistently attracted talent. Earlier, it was home for jazz musicians, today you will find budding designers, photographers, artists and writers living here — because the housing is affordable, and because the people are left to be who they are”. The promise in the future is to bring in more local influence and do collaborations with artists from different parts of the country.

It seems the idea of renewal might already be working if the example of Lendl D’Souza is anything to go by. Lendl feels his participation in the project is one of the reasons for him to move back to Bandra, after his family had shifted base to New Zealand a few years ago. He narrates the story of Chor Aunty to illustrate the change. “There is this woman who lived adjacent to the property we were painting. The kids nicknamed her Chor Aunty because she never spoke to anyone and they thought she stole for a living. When the kids joined in to paint, they were shocked when the lady talked to them and even complimented them. Perhaps perceptions will change now.”