Mysore is a politically active city. And so we have turned it into a flex city. We have illegal flex boards all over the place. Every other area these days has some leader or the other putting up his photograph on a flex board. Earlier there used to be only one pose — the “Namaste pose” with a cold smile. These days there is a new pose — talking on the mobile phone pose. These ubiquitous political flex boards are an eyesore. So why isn't the Corporation doing enough to control it? Is it fair for the City Corporation to collect money from legit businesses for their hoardings while turning a blind eye at the huge flex boards that are erected for free by various groups? What is the message the Corporation is trying to convey — break the law, have a mob and there will be no reaction from the authorities?
That apart, another new trend has started in Mysore — vandalising hoardings. But of late, this activity has gone to a new level in a display of perversion. On Hunsur road next to “Mystore” (formerly Nilgiris), there is a hoarding for a clothing store called “Hot Chilly” that no one can miss. Vandals have gone ahead and tarred it. What is disturbing is that, these perverted vandals have applied tar on only the bosom of the model (see picture).
It seems we can't keep our hands to ourselves. Everyone has this problem but in some cases it gets out of control. All of us doodle something or anything on any piece of paper lying around when we are talking on the phone. In fact many have a particular favourite drawing when they are talking on the phone to keep them distracted. One of my aunts has been drawing a woman’s face for well over two decades now. Every time she is on the phone and the speaker on the other end seems boring, out comes her pen and she starts drawing a plumpy feminine face with pouting lips, a big bindi and neatly combed hair. Back then I thought she was drawing goddess Kali. Well these days the drawing has gotten sleeker and the face now looks like Brinda Karat’s. Every time she visits us, the magazines and writing pads by the phone turn into scrap books covered with female faces.
One can see such “wanna be” picassos and Ravi Vermas in waiting areas. Once while sitting in the waiting area of a clinic in Kuvempunagar, I noticed an elderly man had picked up a movie magazine to read while waiting to be called in. After a few minutes I saw him take out his pen and writing something in the magazine. I assumed that he was doing one of those movie crosswords or some puzzle. Soon he was called and he immediately put the magazine down and what I saw was bewildering. He had managed to make Bipasha Basu, a popular actress, look like a Royal Gabbar Singh. It seemed like he had started by trying to make her look more beautiful by putting a bindi and extending her lashes but somewhere down the road towards his artistic destination he decided to change course and make her a man.
He had scratched a thick blue beard and rendered a slender blue royal moustache with the waxed twist at the end. He was in the middle of giving her a nice crown like the one worn by mythological kings when he was called in by the doc. What was even funnier is that this elderly man had even used two colours. A combination of red and blue. Red for the bindi and lips and the rest in blue. Soon I started noticing that many people have this bad habit of trying to enhance photographs. Doing this in the privacy of your home on a magazine or paper that you have paid for is one thing but sitting in a public place and defacing another person’s property shows lack of manners and respect.
This attitude is carried on even in the public domain. Many movie posters are defaced after a few days. If the movie poster has a woman prominently shown, then these artists with itchy fingers go ballistic with their brushes. They do more to enhance the actress’ assets than even her own plastic surgeon would dare imagine!
But there is also a legal aspect to it. Business houses buy the hoardings after paying money to the Corporation. So a hoarding is a property of the business house until the legal tenure is over. Vandalising a hoarding is in fact a crime. It's called destruction of private property (depends on the kind of contract the temporary hoarding owner has with the Corporation) and a case can be filed seeking compensation from the vandals.
There was a provision under the Karnataka Police Act, 1963 to deal with defacing public property but it was not found to be sufficient to check the menace. So an Act, Karnataka Open Places (Prevention of Disfigurement) Act, 1981 was passed and it was deemed to have come into force in the cities of Bangalore, Mysore, Hubli - Dharwad, Mangalore and Belgaum. Basically this Act made defacing hoardings and public properties, urinating on walls, sticking posters on walls an offence punishable with fine or jail term.
Our MCC Commissioner has great plans for our city. It is a very ambitious plan going by the content of his Vision Mysore 2025 document. In fact one of the ideas put forth in the vision documents is to make Mysore an “Ivory” city. What this means is that the MCC will try and paint as many buildings in ivory white and encourage people to paint their establishments and houses the same colour. The planners hope that Mysore will look white and bright like the bright Blue City Jodhpur in Rajasthan. This is a very idealistic and artistic idea but with the number of people in our city with itchy fingers and naughty minds, we doubt if the Commissioner’s Vision will be visually pleasing.
Keeping the city clean is already becoming a huge financial and logistical nightmare for our administration. Now to add keeping the city white would be near impossible…unless, of course, the Commissioner puts the law to use.
As long as we have people who cannot help themselves from enhancing wall posters, as long as we have political parties who have no respect towards our city’s aesthetics, and as long as the bureaucracy does not seriously implement the laws that are there at their disposal to keep the city clean, there will be more illegal political flex boards. Unless the administration takes hoarding vandals to task, there will be more perverted vandals who will show us in poor light to the tourists who visit our city.
