31 October,2010 11:30 AM IST | | Lalitha Suhasini
It was the big three O. We were racing against time to get there. Predictably so. We envisaged a wall project with Sunday MiD DAY'S 30th anniversary theme, Preview Mumbai, which would affect how we perceived art and life in the coming months, as its centrepiece. Imagine a sea link on the wall, a clown, a bluesman, all drawing from the theme. The possibilities were endless, and the future, vibrant. Unpredictably, the artist dropped out at the nth hour.
With a five-day deadline, we dialled Jugaad (https://jugaad.tumblr.com/) for help. The seven month-old design agency, we realised, was a one-woman army, which lived upto its name. Amrita Bagchi, a 26 year-old visual artist found many ways to turn into a jugaadu, a gatherer of resources. She reasoned that Bandra, where she worked, lent itself to innovation and a community way of life. An elderly neighbour offered her a stool to sit on as she painted, the driver of an auto that put-putted through the narrow alley dished out advice, "Place paint boxes on a wooden plank, men. It's easier to move everything at once. Pre-tweens dropped by to fill in the drawing with colour.
As roosters roamed the roofs, cats and dogs lounged around with eyes half open, not a leaf seemed to move in lazy Kantiwadi. Only Bagchi worked her fingers swiftly. With one day to finish, she worked a 16-hour shift, redoing the entire theme. But that's another story. With help from 12 year-old Ella D'abreo, her 10 year-old sister Liesl (they had just finished their exams, and had little to do) and Sudeip V Nair, founder of Bombay Elektrik Project that promotes deejays and artists in the city, Bagchi painted us our own little wall of fame.
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