Dr. Krishnasamy Road is definitely not the best of places to spend an entire morning, especially when one is looking at a 48-hour weekend ahead. But 40 young men and women decided that it was indeed the place to be, for they had found something interesting to do at the location.
The group focused its attention on the wall near the church there and opposite the railway track. After some discussion, the group used scrubbers, paints and brushes for the next few hours to come up with interesting, colourful graffiti.
The objectives are to clean the wall, prevent it from being used for sticking bills and encourage the members of the public to be more socially conscious, says C. Kishore of ‘My City, Clean City’.
Under the ‘My City, Clean City’ banner, members of two non-government organisations, Nilgiris Social Awareness Team and Enlightening Future, students from the Kumaraguru College of Technology and a few other institutions, and others, joined hands to clean and paint the wall. After obtaining permission from the Coimbatore Corporation, the group identified the wall and its members got together to decide on the graffiti.
“The process usually takes a week and by the Thursday, it decides what to do,” Mr. Kishore says.
On Saturday, the group got support from the Kumaraguru College of Technology Joint Correspondent Shankar Vanavarayar, who not only sent in his students but also sponsored the paint. And, he too was there to clean the wall as he “found it interesting and felt tempted to do more.”
College students Boobalan J., Arun S. and others say the experience of cleaning a wall in the heart of the city was very different from carrying out NSS projects in rural areas. B. Goutham says the difficulties faced in doing the job will motivate students to not dirty the wall or throw litter around.
The entire process begins with the team members scrubbing the wall and then painting it white. Then art enthusiasts C. Arvind, K. Deepak and D. Shyam take over to draw the outline of what they have conceived.
Once the outline is done, a few members of the team take up the colouring job as per instructions.
Mr. Arvind, a self-made art teacher, says that he takes inspiration from the Internet or draws what comes to his mind at the moment. The aim is to keep it simple for people to understand.
Thus far the team has painted walls in Kuniamuthur, VOC Park, R.S. Puram and a few other areas.
Corporation Commissioner G. Latha who was there to encourage students, says the more colleges must come forward to take up the activity. And, if they do so the city will be clean in no time.
