Your next company retreat need not be a mad dash to the nearest hill station or beach. Instead, you can de-stress within the city itself armed with a brush and a can of paint.
After working with groups of volunteers, like The Ugly Indian who 'spotfix' Namma Metro piers and stations, the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation is welcoming residents and employees of private companies to beautify the metro.
Last week, around 300 employees of an accounting firm based in Bagmane Tech Park worked on the pillars and boundary walls near C.V. Raman Nagar in collaboration with The Ugly Indians.
The decision to get citizen groups involved in creating art for Namma Metro began with Peenya station a few years ago. This quickly spread. Groups like The Ugly Indian as well as students from design schools and even local government schools started to paint the pillars to get rid of the drab grey. Now, quite a few companies have been showing interest in this movement, say metro officials.
“We want to engage with the community in multiple ways and one of them is to permit organised groups to get together as a community and participate in these exercises. They must be able to add value to the city in terms of aesthetics and the work must last a couple of years,” said U.A. Vasanth Rao, Chief Public Relations Officer (CPRO), BMRCL.
While piers on the Purple Line have been painted earlier, the newly opened south section of the Green Line is waiting for a facelift. “Ideally, corporates could join hands with art institutions or groups like The Ugly Indians for focused projects to improve the city scape,” Mr. Rao added.
Commuters set a record on Monday
A gloomy Monday morning after a rainy night seems to have motivated many commuters to switch over to Namma Metro to get to work. With traffic jams on major roads across the city, the Metro broke the previous ridership record with more than 3.62 lakh commuters using the service on Monday. The previous record was set on August 23 by 3.61 lakh commuters.
