Artist treads on 'moon craters' on Bengaluru road

Noted street artist-cum-civic activist Baadal Nanjundaswamy on Monday treated Twitterati to a video clip of him walking on a potholed road in the city, resembling craters on the moon, ostensibly to expose the pathetic condition of the roads in India's tech hub.

Dressed as an astronaut, 40-year-old Nanjundaswamy is seen 'moon-walking' cautiously on the side of Tunganagar main road, riddled with cater-sized potholes even as vehicles pass by in the city's northwest suburb.

Nanjundaswamy captioned the video clip: "Hello bbmp @BBMPCOMM @BBMP_MAYOR @bbmp, adding hashtags #thelatest #streetart #nammabengaluru #herohalli" to draw the the civic agency's attention to the condition of the roads across the city.

Though the artist intended to shake up the civic agency from its slumber to fill-up the potholes on a war-footing, the video footage went viral on Twitter, provoking adverse comments galore for the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) for its apathy in fixing the roads.

A senior civic official, who was unaware of the minute-long video clip trending in the virtual world, told that the bad condition of the roads would be brought to the attention of the engineer concerned for repairing at the earliest.

"Efforts are on to fill the potholes and re-lay the roads, which get more damaged during the monsoon season due to wear and tear and waterlogging. Frequent rains have been hampering repair works. All potholes will be filled up soon as the southwest monsoon ends by this month-end," said BBMP spokesman L.B. Suresh.

Nanjundaswamy has used his creative artworks in the past to red flag the callousness of the civic administration in maintaining the roads and other amenities, by displaying dummy mermaids and crocodiles around potholes to draw the BBMP's attention to the city's infrastructure woes.

Hailing the artist's surreal image of the 'lunar craters' on city roads, a Bengalurean tweeted: "Your creativity is just out of the moon. I'm sure BBMP will say.... What's the big deal... even moon has craters."

Another user tweeted that ISRO can train its astronauts on the city's potholed roads as they are as big and wide as on the moon's surface.

The video clip became an instant hit in the virtual world as, coincidentally, on the day when Chandrayaan-2 mission's lander Vikram with rover Pragyan separated from its Orbiter about 100 kms above the lunar surface for its soft-landing near the moon's south pole on early September 7.

The ambitious outer space mission is being monitored and manoeuvred from the telemetry, tracking and command network (Istrac) of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in the city's northern suburb.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to witness the historic event from the space agency's mission control room in Istrac in the wee hours of September 7.

( With inputs from IANS )