A Chennai resident views rusty old telephone boxes as canvases

Anna Nagar resident Shobha V. Manickam likes to refresh lacklustre things with art no matter where they are found. This inclination drew her to old, rusted BSNL junction boxes on Second Main Road in Anna Nagar East, where her apartment is located.

A sustainability advocate, Shobha had brought art to the common garden at her apartment complex, coopting discarded toilet cisterns, bath tubs, X-ray films, glass panes, tiles and plastic sheets into an exercise marked by an array of installations capped off with paintings.

The rusty old box

Two years ago, unhappy to see the telephone junction units outside her apartment complex wearing a rusty, drab look. Shobha asked the maintenance section of the department if they could give it a fresh coat of paint. “They replied that any such work was subject to a budget being allocated for it, and none was on the way. So, with their permission, I got the front portion of one of the boxes painted but that faded with time,” says Shobha, who is 76 years old.

Some months ago, she renewed the exercise. The fact that she had found allies helped matters.

Removing rust from the telephone units was a daunting task and Shobha was wondering since last year how to go about this work. “The new watchman Shankaralingam who joined duty showed interest in the paintings I had done around our building. I asked him if he could help me scrub out the rust, he agreed. And with his help, the boxes were treated to two coats of anti-rust paint. He did it without asking for payment and worked only during his off-duty hours. I paid him and offered to also teach him simple sketching and painting,” says Shobha.

All her beautification drives are done with waste materials and leftover acrylic wall paints given by friends and neighbours. This time, her immediate neighbour and friend Sokkalingam, who painted his flat last year, gave her the leftover paint.

Nature is her favourite theme and this time she went one step ahead to promote another initiative by a Chennai resident who has been encouraging people to grow sunflowers.

“Shefali Dadabhoy has embarked on this beautiful movement of involving people to plant sunflowers since the city is a sun blessed city. With limited sun space in our building, I planted just two pots, but I wanted to spread the message. So I put this message to grow sunflowers in the two boxes that are facing the roadside,” she says.

Shobha hopes to inspire others to be more mindful about how they deal with garbage and discarded items. In fact Shobha does not want her picture to go with this initiative; she would rather be known by her art and the message she is trying to put across.

“Garbage, waste articles dumped on roadsides reflect the poor civic sense of the residents. If each of us do our bit then we would be sending out a message to everyone around around us,” says the septuagenarian. And the results are there for all to enjoy.