Art everywhere
Perhaps it was only natural that Bhubaneswar would turn to art when it came to decking up the city for its biggest event in recent memory — that, after all, runs in this ancient town’s blood with the sculptures carved on the walls of its temples dating back to thousands of years. There is a lot of paint being splashed around in Odisha’s capital, but it’s not of the mundane sort, a fresh unidimensional coat of paint to its buildings. Instead it’s in the form of vibrant street art.
Most of it is in line with the larger theme of the World Cup, but some of the graffiti is amusingly random. Under an overbridge near Rasulgarh Square is painted the face of a woman, undoubtedly that of Venus from Botticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus’, the rest of erotic painting omitted for obvious reasons. Adorning a wall next to that is the face of Spanish artist Salvador Dali with his moustache twirled up towards the sky. Painted on the walls outside the Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology are the wildlife of Odisha — Olive Ridley turtles, red crabs, crocodiles, birds. Near the Kalinga Stadium though, the theme is inevitably hockey. Plastered all over the vicinity are murals in the colours of all sixteen nations participating in the tournament from the brushes of Gopal Krushna Ruth and his 30 co-artists.
Rush hour at Kalinga
The epicentre of this whole exercise is the Kalinga Stadium itself where last minute works are proceeding at a frenetic pace. Sparks fly from a foot overbridge just outside the stadium’s main gate as workers weld in the few remaining sheets of metal. A few yards away, machines spread soil over the uneven ground in an attempt to level them. The main stadium though is fully ready for the World Cup with the Indian team camping here for the last couple of months. The team’s presence means that the World Cup has arrived early for the stadium and its staff.
An event for everyone
That tickets for the World Cup matches would be in hot demand was obvious last year itself when matches of the FIH World League Finals were played out to packed stands. But the frenzy surrounding the event seems to have even exceeded the grand designs of the organisers who doubled the capacity of the Kalinga Stadium to 15,000 seats. The World Cup, it seems, is something that everyone wants a piece of. The one thing you could possibly sell at the most inflated prices in Bhubaneswar right now is a ticket to the opening ceremony on November 27.
The tickets, when put on sale on an online portal, sold out within minutes with the site crashing repeatedly much to the disappointment of fans who had been wandering upto the Kalinga Stadium enquiring when the tickets would be available. The demand is so much so that the Odisha government is holding two opening ceremonies — one at the Kalinga Stadium and one at the Barabati Stadium in Cuttack.