Sri's Musings from Bangalore

In Bangalore city, one can take a “Virtual Tour” of most all places in Karnataka – neigh this one is not an electronic tour - it’s all the “writing (painting) on the wall”!

The city is being ripped apart – old giving way to the new as if it were. What with a frenzy of tree cutting and digging up of main thoroughfares and beautiful broad tree-lined roads for the elusive but “soon to-arrive” and much awaited “Metro” – it’s going to solve all our traffic woes they say!

2 Pics: Artistic backdrops – footpaths - oblivious pedestrians

Every time I go around the city and see the pictures that adorn the walls around building and parks and bridges and underpasses, I’m reminded of the Graffiti episode described in the Malcolm Gladwell’shttp://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/) Bestseller book “Tipping point” http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/index.html). On one of the pages, he describes how the New York (subway/trains would get cleaned of graffiti on each trip, each and every time … and how… slowly crime kept reducing and how the city became a cleaner and bit safer, ultimately

3 Pics: Walls – with paper posters – they continue to tear down those posters, appeal to the public to “Stick No Bills”, paint the walls white and then begin to adorn them – creativity unleashed!

Graffiti /Street Art has a charm of its own…

I’ve been clicking photos on my rides around the city – during my general commute from here to there and everywhere.

Aside:

[ It seemed to have became a “Topical” thing – this news about the dying art of painting posters and such I mean. A few weeks back, I read an article titled “Pop Art - Bollywood’s Real Poster Boys” in May 22^nd, Sat MINT newspaper:

This article, reminded of the “Vanishing art of painting Bollywood posters”: http://ibnlive.in.com/news/the-vanishing-art-of-painting-bollywood-posters/53047-19.html

In yonder years, artists actually painted film posters – no prints. Here’s a “film pater” collage I found on the WWW: http://www.mediascape.ac.nz/cms/uploads/images/diversity/Collage.jpg

And a site with “Vintage Bollywood Movie Poster Collection 591 Posters” - Nostalgic!

http://www.yeeeeee.com/2008/11/08/vintage-bollywood-movie-poster-collection-591-posters/

End Aside

This is more of a picture blog. I’ve loaded it with pics I took in the past few months – captions tell the tale…

2 Pics: Old wall getting ready for the painting…

1 Pic: A green auto and the lake pictured on one of the underpasses…

Other new cities (New Delhi?) – may be a different “actual” place from the “old” city. But new Bangalore is the same real estate – 100s or 1000’s time the price – land is gold – and being converted at an unbelievable and unfathomable pace to a newness that is to be discussed and debated --- no more green – no more rain – no more water – but lots of colour, lots of chaos and a another world!

Others have written about this topic too - Wall Paints Beautifying Bangalore

http://mohanbn.com/blog/wall-paints-beautifying-bangalore

...

Last but not the least I’d like to share the “Graffiti” on my own office cubical wall. Not necessarily inspired by the walls of Bangalore city but more with an effort to personalize my space, I covered the walls of my cube with memorabilia. Much like the real walls around the city, my cube got slowly filled up – with not an inch of space! Here are some of those pics…

The clean plain grey wall that I covered, colored and cluttered --- transformed over a period of time … To the patch-work

Walls of my cube – with amateur kid’s art work (my child’s :) ) and personal pics…, my collectibles…

My office wall… with greeting cards, a certificate...

The volunteer wall I call it ... and the desk with so much stuff - flyers, posters from so many NGOs doing yeoman service in the city!

Labels: city art, Graffiti

# posted by Sri Renganathan @ 6:47 AM