A long walk on the streets anywhere in the city of Mumbai will make you come across walls covered and cluttered with graffiti. Untidy, sometimes explicit and callously done, but otherwise vibrant and meaningful, graffiti is an interpretation of the feelings of a city.
While shooting the popular Star Wars series The Mandalorian, the production designers decided to design a particular set of an underworld alleyway with graffiti based on the history of the original Star Wars story. It was greatly praised by critics and brought a sense of nostalgia and realism to the entire episode. Likewise, in Mumbai, a much bigger variant of Hollywood in India, portraits of the big screen’s most acclaimed stars of the past and present come alive on our streets and give people of all generations a sense of the real old world Indian cinema industry. Living proof that these nostalgic fantasies and their patrons once existed.
Art is a universal language. Make it relatable and the impact is doubled. Use it for a cause, nothing like it! The people of this metropolitan are multilingual and the informal way in which graffiti speaks to people is ideal to spread messages about social changes that occur in everyday life. The ones outside Marine Lines railway station on ‘Clean India’ are a classic example.
Amidst the skyscrapers, billionaires and malls of the city, graffiti tells the inside story of the millennials that bring the city to life. The artists, the thinkers, the real contrast of the lives of the people that call this place home, each and every person contributing to its diversity. Graffiti is a flowy art done with ease, and there is no specific method. In many ways, it’s like this city. Traffic flows, gossip flows, workflows and simultaneously people flow. People don’t need to be told to fill up the local trains every day or go to work every day. It’s habitual. After all, it is the city that never sleeps. All of this and more is what graffiti, especially in Mumbai, actually stands for.
From afar, the city is synonymous with glamor but in its details, there is graffiti. Defining the alleys, colonies, and highways, you may not notice it but it’s there. If you are keen enough to look, you will find them and if you introspect a little, they will tell you their story.
City streets depicting graffiti
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