CLEANING UP THE MESS: Karan Nevatia and his friends scrape off the film posters that have been plastered on their murals along Senapati Bapat Marg in Lower Parel

 

Mahafreed Irani | TNN (THE TIMES OF INDIA; October 28, 2009)

 

 

Mumbai: On Tuesday evening, Karan Nevatia and his friends travelled to Lower Parel equipped with dishwashing liquid, knives and water. At 8 pm, the group started scraping off film posters that had been plastered on their murals along Senapati Bapat Marg. Nevatia and a group of over hundred other citizens had participated in a wall painting event on Sunday, organised by the BMC and the Wall Project, a community of graffiti artists. But within 24 hours after the walls got a facelift, news of several paintings being vandalised broke on the Internet. Paintings of yellow giraffes and white Zoozoos were buried behind gawdy Bollywood kitsch. Utsavi Jhaveri (19), a media student, was angry when she read about it. Jhaveri, along with her friend Sahil Mehta, went to the wall to tear off the posters. “We had to look for air bubbles between the posters and the wall. The glue made it difficult,’’ said the Lala Lajpatrai College student. “This was one time the BMC had come forward to do something positive with the participation of citizens. Sadly, it was destroyed within a few hours.’’ Calling it blasphemy, angry artists and Mumbaikars protested online against the producers of films Aladin, London Dreams, Gair and Canvas, whose posters had defaced the More >