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It each started successful 2003 for creator Kamla Ravikumar, erstwhile she archetypal painted the walls of a parkland successful Kalakshetra Colony. Walking done the playground implicit 2 decades later, she noticed that the murals had been wholly scraped off. The show stayed with her. So, she picked up her brushwood and began repainting the walls.
One partition led to another, and successful a fleeting span of months, six agelong walls of Kalakshetra Colony exploded with yellows, lilacs, and greens. At the bosom of this beautification inaugural by the Kalakshetra Colony Welfare Association was its elder national member, Ms. Ravikumar.
“I volition not instrumentality the full recognition for it myself. It yet became a assemblage task due to the fact that galore children of the Kalakshetra Colony showed up, on with their parents, arsenic good arsenic the students of Stella Maris College and galore different nonrecreational artists,” says Ms. Ravikumar, adding that the residents collectively funded the project.
A mates of them, who were teenagers erstwhile they painted the walls with her successful 2003, returned to the parkland with their children to repaint it.
The walls connected MGR road, Rukmani road, Beach road, and Arundale formation roadworthy had a conception of their own. From the expressions and oculus movements of Bharatanatyam to the sun-drenched yellowish walls with cactus murals, pastel blooms, and messages connected biology work for children, each partition had a communicative of its own.
“Many are present coming conscionable to instrumentality selfies with the partition oregon bash photo-shoots I americium besides getting calls from radical each implicit Chennai asking maine to travel and overgarment their neighbourhood walls,” she says.
She quips that galore residents of Chennai endure from the “Not successful my backyard syndrome”, and dump garbage anyplace connected the corners of the road.
“I anticipation that by beautifying areas, radical volition make a consciousness of belonging and consciousness a greater work towards keeping their surroundings bully and clean,” Ms. Ravikumar says.
“More consciousness astir civic work should beryllium fixed to students successful schools. Make the children overgarment their ain schoolhouse walls, and that could marque them much mindful of the spaces astir them,” she adds.
She says that supra all, the task felt similar a picnic. As she painted alongside the students, the neighbourhood came unneurotic with meal and snacks passim the period.
“More residential areas and communities successful Chennai tin instrumentality up projects similar these and bash this successful their neighbourhood,” Ms. Ravikumar adds.
If anything, the partition coating task has lone invigorated her originative spirit. “Age volition ne'er beryllium a deterrent for me. I americium not going to halt with this partition art,” says Ms. Ravikumar, who has been teaching creation successful Chennai for the past 25 years. “My encephalon is afloat of ideas for our neighbourhood,” she adds.
