Travelling on a suburban train late at night, after a hard day’s work, can be a relaxing and pleasant experience for commuters. However, this is also the time when the defacing of trains and pasting of graffiti and posters takes place, turning the coaches into an eyesore.
Though the Southern Railway is actively involved in the Centre’s cleanliness campaign and policemen and railway authorities maintain a vigil against graffiti, a few people do manage to deface coaches in the dead of the night.
Private firms – mostly fly-by-night operators — hire young men to paste bills on the walls of coaches. The men board trains at stations such as Chetpet where there is hardly any police presence. Before the train reaches Nungambakkam, the men, mostly in groups of four, manage to paste the posters which are usually advertisements of companies offering anything from spurious products, medial relief from ailments and jobs for students and homemakers.
“Earlier, they used to carry a plastic bucket with gum to paste the paper bills but now, they use stickers. They peel off the sticky side of the publicity bill plastic and leave it within the coach,” an RPF Inspector says. The RPF, he says, conducts surprise checks and rounds up men indulging in defacing railway property, be it coaches or platforms, but they are let off with a fine of Rs. 500.
It is not just an eyesore, policemen add. The graffiti often hides important messages or contact numbers to be used in the event of an emergency.
