Residents, students transform Haralur from squalor to showpiece

Fed up with garbage accumulating and people relieving themselves in public, residents of Springfield Apartments in Haralur near Sarjapur have taken up an initiative to beautify and spruce up their surroundings.

This drive started over two months ago and at first, it was just the Springfield Apartment residents who took an active part in it. Meera Nair, a resident who was among those who conceptualised the drive, said students of Greenwood High had come to the residents with a desire to clean up the surroundings. After a few meetings, the residents’ association decided to start this initiative.

“Students from Greenwood High came up with the idea of keeping the surroundings tidy. We thought cleaning will not help much but beautification will,” said Meera.

They removed muck from the walls, plastered the wall afresh, created a lawn and planted saplings to give a facelift to the area. Soon, artists from the area joined the team and painted the wall with social messages emphasising on environment protection. The campaign received a response from the nearby apartments, especially Raindrops Complex in Haralur. Some auto drivers too came forward for the beautification drive. “We knew we had to send a message across, so we chose the colours accordingly. If you see, we have a lot of red and yellow, which are the state’s colours and no one would want to dirty or disfigure the state’s colours,” said Meera, who is a freelance writer.

The residents wanted the paintings themed around ‘Keep it Local’. Based on Shubha Ramachandran’s suggestion, a Water Sustainability Consultant with Biome Environmental Solutions, the team painted the lake ecosystem in Haralur.