graffiti blocks the street

  

Sunday morning found Mesha and me crawling groggily out of bed to stare at this large stack of cardboard cartons we had managed to scrounge and find in a small go-down in Sheshadripuram over the previous week. We wanted to paint out the logos that were scattered all over the boxes and test whether the paints we had would hold, show and behave. This exercise turned out to be more fun than I expected actually. Ended up with a bunch of my cousins, a sibling and one 3-and -something-year-old niece happily dipping into the paint tubs and ‘helping’ out. Net result - painted boxes + very colourful balcony.

By 3pm we set out to block the streets. My little gray Indica could barely hold all the nonsense we had in there. Cartons, easels, paint, buckets, banners, stones (picked off the roads to hold down the cartons), cameras, magazines, newspapers…ahhh you name it! The car was a veritable A-Z supply store.

Rendezvous point at brigade road found us off-loading at superhuman pace and with some volunteers and a very curious crowd we had our wall up ten past 4. Yes, yes, we actually pulled it off!!!

From free Tibet to Why No Parking...
all kinds of gripes and gratitude were splattered on our wall pretty soon. I‘m just amazed at the reaction we get every time we do our street Acts. After some momentary hesitation, most people just get right in and get totally involved with painting,
writing , sticking .

This free-form graffiti wall really worked out. We’ll just put up a small bulletin saying that we’re painting and everyone can come join us we plotted while stuck in traffic that day. No more cajoling and canvassing…let see how it plays itself out. If people see that we are having fun, it shouldn’t take them too much to want to join in right? Worked like a charm. Tons of people walked up to us and asked if they could dip in. yes yes, please do…that only is the idea.
More and more I love these Sundays!

Hey, one BIG thank-you to all the ppl who came out there and graffitied with us! One special mention to Vasundhara Das for coming out there to support us :) Some regular faces that we are fully happy to see - Anand, Dawood, Tomek, Sandeep
If i've left out any names please just comment or email in

Photographs by Saurabh. Many, many thanks da!

See you all next Sunday then. 4pm. brig rd....till then, post in your thoughts by SMSing to our standingonfish blog
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