From grunge to grace

Scruffy traffic chowkis in Mumbai are undergoing a transformation.

With railway tracks on one side, and a cemetery on the other, the Kalbadevi police chowki was hardly the sunniest place to visit "" but that's now in the past. The rooms might still shudder each time a train rumbles by, but a makeover by artists Papri Bose and Anjana Mehra hopes to inspire good humour once the facade is ready next week.

Police chowkis and art? Ridiculous as it might sound, Satish Mathur, joint traffic commissioner of police, Mumbai, has rolled out a beautification plan for key vehicle-towing centres, soliciting the creative vision of the city's artists.

"I had seen art creeping into public spaces, and realised that in our chowkis we too had the space to showcase art," says Mathur, "It's not just that I want them to look beautiful, I also wanted them to set a precedence for the precincts they were in."

The first to go under the surgeon's knife, the Colaba chowki was taken on by artist Brinda Chudasama Miller and architect husband Alfaz Miller. "I wanted to restore the Colaba chowki to complement the heritage of south Mumbai," says Mathur.

Ironically, the chowki wasn't completely unknown to the artist. "My car used to get towed there often, and I'd think 'What a dump!' but I discovered later it was actually a wonderful structure with lovely stone walls," says Chudasama Miller.

It took the couple four months of sustained interest and effort to restore it, and embellish the exterior with a china mosaic map of the vicinity, and even get children from the Society for the Education of the Crippled (SEC) to paint traffic symbols on canary yellow windows.

The next to follow was Bhoiwada in central Mumbai. Mathur envisioned it to reflect the emerging vibrancy of the area so Bose Krishnamachari painted abstract splashes of colour on the facade.

And now, Papri Bose and Anjana Mehra have screen-printed graphic interpretations of urban life and vehicular traffic on white tiles at the Colaba chowki; the floor is metal "" the same as in buses; the entryway is suffused in truck art with motifs of lotuses, flowers and birds. Says Bose, "We all know truck art is unusually beautiful, but few of us incorporate it into our lives."

The dominant motif is that of a larger-than-life red car that draws your attention to the fact that it is a towing post. "Signage was important to us because it is usually so poor in our country," explains Mehra. Bose is keen to point out that the car has no wheels. "That's because the car comes in impotent, towed away not on its own strength but weakened," she laughs.

There's an air of festivity in the chowki. Inspector Pereira, who wields the baton around here, looks excited about the makeover of his workspace; he also acts as enforcer of rules and arbitrator of disputes. So every time the sub contractors slack off, he cracks the whip "" metaphorically, of course.

Sourcing the funding hasn't been a problem so far. "In the case of the Bhoiwada outpost, the ITC Grand Central agreed to sponsor it," says Mathur. "Today, even the artists are volunteering their services, unsolicited."

With just another week to completion, the next project is revving up at the starting line. This time it will be metal sculptor Arzan Khambatta and artist Sunil Padwal working their magic on a chowki at Sahar International Airport, to be followed by one in Goregaon by Samir Mondal.

With Chudasama Miller and Mathur as a two-member committee to see it through, this mission has not lost momentum since it began. "I guess nobody trusted the cops to get a job done, and done well," says Mathur.

And oh, in true trucker style, the entryway to the Kalbadevi chowki reads 'Smile OK Please'. If the law don't work for you, maybe a little humour will.