Going 'underground' to uplift City's subways

The subway at KR Circle that is shunned by the public on most days was bustling with people on Sunday.

Thanks to the ‘Bangalore Underground Festival,’ the subway was full of life with an array of cultural activities taking place there. The event was part of a campaign to promote proper upkeep of subways in the City.

The festival jointly organised by The Ugly Indian (TUI) and the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) saw young artistes using the subway as a platform to showcase their musical talent.
Apart from singing, there were street plays, beat boxing, photography exhibition, wall painting, calligraphy and much more.

Youths, who gathered in huge numbers, cheered on and clicked pictures of the artistes as they performed. The beat boxers and rappers were a huge hit with the audience.

While Martin Yo, a rapper, sang a song that raised voice against the corrupt politicians, Shreyas Kumar, an engineering student who is an expert at beat boxing, enthralled the audience by producing sounds of trance. The volunteers from TUI maintained that there are a total of six subways out of which four were cleaned by them a month ago.

They added: “What better way to reclaim a dead public space than to allow Bangalore’s artistes, performers, musicians, dancers and street play artistes to use them to perform.”

The cultural activities took place at four subways on Sunday. Mayor B S Satyanarayana was impressed with the activities and even indulged in painting the wall.

The walls of the subway were posted with pictures of the cleaning activity that were undertaken by the Ugly Indians, a few weeks ago.

Volunteers and like-minded citizens painted the walls with messages such as ‘Don’t litter, Don’t spit’, ‘Please keep it clean’, among others.

Some of them also did abstract paintings and cartoons on the wall that made the subway look colourful.

TUI is an anonymous group of motivated volunteers who clean Indian streets.