BENGALURU: In a 5-minute video, The Ugly Indian group has compiled visuals of their ‘spot fixes’ done last year – they have covered an impressive 250 such spots. This volunteer group, with the tag line ‘Kaam chalu mooh bandh’, is not the only citizen-led cleaning drive.
City Express compiles the most impressive of such drives done over the last one year by various citizen groups, and we find that these earnest Bengalureans have reached varied spaces – from roadsides, parks and railway stations to government schools, public toilets and vet clinics.
They have waded through muck to clear out piles of trash and to pull out deep-rooted trees, they have lifted heavy boulders and arranged for them to be transported to the designated sites, and they have spent weekends with their families scraping out paint from aging walls and repainting them.
In March, Geechugalus or Scribbles painted the walls of the underpass that runs in front of Shree Dhanvantri Ayurveda Hospital. This group of artists, led by Yash Bhandari, retained patches of murals done by earlier artists and worked with them to create new and contemporary images. For example, a pourakarmika is shown as taking a broom to the previous mural of a shalabhanjika, to ‘sweep’ away the male idea of femininity.
In Domlur, anonymous citizens cleared mounds of trash from a 6,000-sq-ft plot of land owned by BBMP and converted into a dog park. The park opened in August and the maintenance of this space has been left to pet parents in the neighbourhood.
There were other drives too, where people simply cleaned up a road or a footpath. In Jayanagar, Aniruddh Dutt-led Let’s Be the Change cleaned up a 40-m footpath on North Main Road, near Tata Silk Farm in Jayanagar, and painted the walls along it.Big or small, all their efforts were towards a cleaner and more beautiful city, and we salute their spirit.