<p>There couldn’t possibly be a more innovative way to raise awareness against drunken driving.<br /><br /></p>.<p> Campaign Against Drunken Driving (CADD) - India’s only organisation working in this field, recently held an art exhibition with paintings, sculptures, T-shirts and even liquor bottles painted to reflect the consequences of drunken driving. These were donated by a total of 100 artists, including names like Anjolie Ela Menon, Paresh Maity and Amol Das, to raise funds for victims of the malaise and their families. <br /><br />CADD has been working to raise awareness on this issue for the past 12 years now. Its founder-director Prince Singhal says, “Every year, up to one lakh motorists in India lose their lives in accidents involving drunken driving. The problem being little knowledge, lax laws and even laxer implementation. Even today, cases of drunken driving are clubbed under Rash and Negligent Driving sections of IPC, when it is actually a pre-meditated crime. When you get behind the wheels after having liquor, you already know that you are jeopardsing your as well as the fellow motorists’ lives.”<br /><br />“Unfortunately, inspite of the issue being so grave, raising awareness on it, especially among the youth, is very difficult. If you organise just an art exhibit, people hardly take note. Hence, we requested artists to paint liquor bottles to create striking visual effects. <br /><br />We are glad that they have attracted enough attention.” One, for example, by artist Shabir is painted in blood red. It has a man holding his head in his hands, a liquor bottle and glasses and a skull symbolic of death and an ominous spider in black.<br /><br />A bottle painted by Niren Sengupta shows a traffic signal with a zebra crossing below, a man with glass spilling over liquor, and evocatively, a woman waiting, supposedly, for her husband to come home. Another by Prasanta Mukherjee is painted black and has red spikes all over, suggestive of the pain one would have to bear if he or she took to the road in a drunken state.<br /><br />Creatively, a bottle painted by Dhaneshwar Shah shows a corkscrew, used to open wine bottles, biting the man using it. Understandably, a lot of thought has gone into painting the bottles and curating the exhibition itself. Hope it convinces alcoholics to dump the habit as well. <br /></p>
<p>There couldn’t possibly be a more innovative way to raise awareness against drunken driving.<br /><br /></p>.<p> Campaign Against Drunken Driving (CADD) - India’s only organisation working in this field, recently held an art exhibition with paintings, sculptures, T-shirts and even liquor bottles painted to reflect the consequences of drunken driving. These were donated by a total of 100 artists, including names like Anjolie Ela Menon, Paresh Maity and Amol Das, to raise funds for victims of the malaise and their families. <br /><br />CADD has been working to raise awareness on this issue for the past 12 years now. Its founder-director Prince Singhal says, “Every year, up to one lakh motorists in India lose their lives in accidents involving drunken driving. The problem being little knowledge, lax laws and even laxer implementation. Even today, cases of drunken driving are clubbed under Rash and Negligent Driving sections of IPC, when it is actually a pre-meditated crime. When you get behind the wheels after having liquor, you already know that you are jeopardsing your as well as the fellow motorists’ lives.”<br /><br />“Unfortunately, inspite of the issue being so grave, raising awareness on it, especially among the youth, is very difficult. If you organise just an art exhibit, people hardly take note. Hence, we requested artists to paint liquor bottles to create striking visual effects. <br /><br />We are glad that they have attracted enough attention.” One, for example, by artist Shabir is painted in blood red. It has a man holding his head in his hands, a liquor bottle and glasses and a skull symbolic of death and an ominous spider in black.<br /><br />A bottle painted by Niren Sengupta shows a traffic signal with a zebra crossing below, a man with glass spilling over liquor, and evocatively, a woman waiting, supposedly, for her husband to come home. Another by Prasanta Mukherjee is painted black and has red spikes all over, suggestive of the pain one would have to bear if he or she took to the road in a drunken state.<br /><br />Creatively, a bottle painted by Dhaneshwar Shah shows a corkscrew, used to open wine bottles, biting the man using it. Understandably, a lot of thought has gone into painting the bottles and curating the exhibition itself. Hope it convinces alcoholics to dump the habit as well. <br /></p>
