A bunch of six meets every Sunday to liven up the city’s walls
What did you do this Independence Day? On the drizzly Sunday morning, a couple of young Delhiites got together with the students of the National Association for the Blind to liven up their school walls.
The walls are their canvas; they bleed colours and shoot with brushes to create kaleidoscopic hues. Six enthusiasts meet every Sunday “to add colour and life to the dead walls” of Delhi. Peeping Pandas and falling leaves adorn a parking area wall in Uday Park; vibrant octopi, squids, mermaids swirl in aqua-marine sea water on the walls of Gun Powder restaurant; while a poker-faced hen says “Make love not chicken biriyani” and a giant salamander claims “People are animals too” on the walls of Friendicoes, an animal shelter under the Defence Colony flyover.
Inspiration came from 60-plus photographs on Facebook of the Mumbai walls dappled with pop art and burlesque images. Dhanya Pilo, a documentary filmmaker and an artist who has been running the project in Mumbai for two years, motivated Kanika Seth, a graphic designer to think seriously about doing “something to the Delhi walls too”.
Seth and her five friends, armed with paint tins and brushes, roam the city, select walls with great visibility, seek permission and paint them up. They have also approached the New Delhi Municipal Council for doing up the walls in Khan Market. V K Jha, chief engineer, NDMC, says, “We encourage even the street-corner chai wala to paint with us. It’s a risk we gladly undertake, we are no MF Husains ourselves nor are we any wall police.”
“It’s snowballing into something bigger and better,” beams Seth, “with 1,666 members on Facebook and more than 50 participants every session.”