First wall graffiti ‘fades’,civic body gears up to paint others

“Though the BMC did its best in cleaning and making the wall available to us for painting,beggars came back the very next day. They obviously can’t have a policeman monitoring the wall all the time,” said Nisha Jacob of The Wall Project.

In an initiative to beautify the defaced city walls,the BMC had invited artists from The Wall Project to paint the wall along the Senapati Bapat Road. On August 16,nearly 200 artists and Mumbaikars painted graffiti,social messages,etc.,on it. The BMC had removed illegal hutments along the stretch and cleaned it up for purpose. However,those living on the footpath alongside the wall have made their way back and the paintings have not deterred people from spitting paan on them.

The BMC,however,plans to go ahead with the project. “Many BMC and police officials were busy with election duty in the past month,so we were not able to monitor the area. But we will try to make sure that it does not repeat in the second phase,” Additional Municipal Commissioner R A Rajeev said.

In its second phase,the artists will paint the remaining portion of the Senapati Bapat Road and the wall of Juhu aerodrome along the S V Road on October 25. It will involve paintings on the theme of ‘eradicating illiteracy’ and parts of the wall will be painted with alphabets in Hindi to educate onlookers.

“There are various other BMC-owned walls and subways that are in the pipeline to be painted but there has not been a formal decision on them (BMC) yet,” Jacob said.

The BMC will also come out with a coffee table book about the wall painting project. “After the completion of phase two,we will publish a book of about 100 pages that will have pictures of the entire wall project. We hope to sell at least 500 copies of the same,” Rajeev said.