The Great Wall Of Shame

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 Sunday, 25 October 2009

Mumbai has her head hanging in shame today. She has often been molested, raped and maimed by her own people. But can we paint all of them with the same brush? Naah! There are some energetic  enthusiastic  positive change agents joined in this Sunday 25 October 2009 to paint  the city with their own original  design... straight from their heart.   This young India had no incentive, no awards and no rewards… no mention. But they did brave the sun of the Sunday… and sweat it out and painted the walls … with not just the colour and strokes, but with their high spirits and enthusiasm.  

“That’s what I call positive change. That’s the spirit of Mumbai”  I thought.

Monday, 26 October 2009

But even before my happiness about the newfound spirit of my beloved  famed city could sink in  and warm  the cockles of my heart… In just less than 24 hours, the walls were vandalized. I found the first pictures on Mumbaikar.com and was ashamed, ashamed at the sheer atrocity of things. we always had this wild fascination. We often peed and shat and spat on the walls, and we very unapologetically said – “Im just relieving myself” .  There was nothing Just in that though. This time it was not about relieving,  but obtaining sadistic pleasure in  causing harm to the city and her flight of fantasy.

 My beloved City has her wings chopped and her prestige has been cropped.

 Action Taken???

We have posters of Aladin, Canvas, Gair & London Dreams adorning the walls. Previously we have had groups like Jagrut Nagrik Manch (JNM)who have protested against the political posters being put up illegally, now, it was the turn of film publicists.  It is a matter of absolute shame that people have to resort to this kind of cheap publicity with absolute disregard for citizen’s hard toil and emotions packed in all flamboyance in a wall to be vandalized.

Twitterer s quickly alerted Sujoy Ghosh  and Reitesh Deshmukh  who are the  director actor of the film “Alladin”. They conveyed theirapologies promptly and confirmed that they will get the posters of THEIR film down. And they did, I believe. My friends who panned the area didn’t find any posters of Alladin.

But what about the other posters?  

Mr. Reitesh Deshmukh was the same guy who enjoyed a fantasy trip through Taj with his beloved Ram Gopal Varma, when the whole of Bombay wasn’t allowed to venture in, Reitesh and RGV enjoyed the adventure of disaster tourism then. Why am I speaking about the past now??? Id tell you.

Why the hell cannot Reitesh Deshmukh bring down the other posters down too?? Now that he is a fellow twitterer and also the same influential person who enjoys special privileges like the one mentioned above. Why is it so difficult for him to take a stand and sound action now?

The Road Ahead

Now that he isn’t taking action against the other posters, what are we going to do?

Do we just sit down and crib “this is how things are, and this is how it will be”

Come on People!  Bid good bye to your resigned and cynical attitude.

Let’s rise up and take action. Yes, the walls might get pasted again with mindless graffiti and posters of B grade pictures. But with vigilant twitterers spying we could prove that we don’t live in a land of lawlessness.  And playing with the law of the land and raping the creativity of the cities is not something that anyone would tolerate.

I wish to assert that we aren’t against the movie industry or bollywood at large.  We enjoy films with absolute

My plan of action is as follows.

1)      Write/call  to the producers and the production house who look after the publicity design in most cases  

1. Swadeshi Entertainment for  “Canvas”,  (looking for details)

2. Eros international for “Aladdin” @ + 91 (22) 40538500 email: customerservice4@erosintl.com

3. Gair  (looking for details)

4. Blockbuster  Movie Entertainers London dreams    (info@blockbustermovieentertainers.com )

2)  Call Municipal Commissioners

Shri Rajiv R. A.  Additional Municipal Commissioner City

Office: 2262 0809

Residence: 2368 5676

Source:  http://www.mcgm.gov.in/irj/portalapps/com.mcgm.aDisasterMgmt/docs/DirectoryListMC.pdf

3) Meet on a day and rip off the posters ourselves if no action is taken.

4) Have a constant vigil by twitterers . What’s happened now, could happen again. Be the citizen Blog-Activist.

5) Speak about this, or at least, copy this blog and paste it in your web spaces…  be it facebook notes, twitter docs or blogs.

6) Send this as a forward.

#ProtestAgainstVandalization  keep up the pace. It doesn’t matter if you participated in #TheWallProject or not. You could help your city by simply protesting.

Regards,

@hiyer (Aham)

+919833100340

www.hiyer.net

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