Hello Local Guides!
Last month I came across this wonderful post about “5 Google Moderators share their favorite street art” put together by @IrrPavlova where 5 Moderators had shared some of most scenic wall arts across the world. You can check out that article here
Inspired by the idea of discovering and exploring the artworks and after a little research, I decided to host my first meet-up to Explore Artworks of Lodhi - one of India’s largest display of most beautiful Murals in public spaces. I posted a meet-up request here and it got a whooping 63 people interested in a few weeks! What a delight it was to meet, speak, share, click and engage with local guides offline! Here’s a short recap about everything we did this Sunday morning!
Lodhi Art District is one of India’s largest hubs for most unusual wall art called “Murals” which showcases some of the most colorful gratifies does on regular houses of that area with a lot of thought and compassion. Lodhi is believed to be a place rich in culture and its generous people. It is a residential colony which houses more than 600 families working in Government departments.
We started our walk from historic Delhi Public Library adjacent Samaj Sadan Community Center which was an easier place to find & start our meet-up from. In the early morning summer breeze of 14th April 2019, close to 65 people turned up for the meet-up. We decided to get a little creative and print customized name tags and created a small registration desk using an old rickshaw (a hand pulled cart) to keep our stuff. By the time everyone arrived, we decided to enjoy “Bel Giri-Juice”, which is a popular summer beverage made out of fresh Aegle marmelos.
I had a person ambition to make this meet-up a memorable experience for everyone who would attend it. Hence I spent a lot of time visiting the lanes of Lodhi time and time again to pick the most relevant Murals for the walking tour. I spent hours speaking to artists through their social media to understand what their art works reflected and the effort they had put in it. @mehak played a significant role in all the research work and during the visits to the place before hand.
The Meet-Up was divided into 3 parts
- Part 1 : Exploring Singaporean Lane & its wall murals
- Part 2 : Visit to Delhi’s first Ice Cream factory & enjoying ice creams together
- Part 3 : Guides introductions, networking, quizzing about city & a violence performance
Part One : The Singaporean Lane wall murals
It is the latest addition to the bouquet of wall murals more than 12 walls have been painted by artists from Singapore in this specific lane and maps have very little pictures of these art works because they are newly added in last three months. Hence we picked up this lane for exploration. Read on as I bring you the treat of some of most colorful magnificent and glorifying artworks with a little detail on them
We were able to cover 15 walls in a time span of 60 minutes without even realizing! I was excited to take locals to now Part 2 of my walk which was a way to hidden ice cream factory located right in heart of Lodhi
Part Two : The hidden ice cream factory and distorted art
During my earlier visits to this place I made sure I spent most time in this part of Lodhi (behind Guppy cafe) where lies a wall which not many people know of. It has some of most beautiful poetry painted on the wall with graphics alongside. The walk down the oval wall leads to one of first ice cream factories set up in Delhi.
But I got the shock of my life when on my 4th visit last week (just before 3 days before the meet up) I realized some body had distorted the wall completely by using black spray to destroy and distort the images. However, I decided to take through all local guides through this wall too because it had a strong message about how we need to preserve art and make sure it is not left abandoned. LGs did feel the pain of loosing such brilliant poetic art work to black paint that had been used on artwork to distort it but it made us learn how we must respect the artists and their art works
We now entered the CreamBell Ice Cream factory headed by a man who had been running that factory for more than 35 years! He shared his story of how he lost his finger in one of factory accidents and about how he still enjoys manufacturing and trading ice creams. We clicked plenty of pictures with the ice cream vendors and their vehicles.
The owner also offered us to try one of new upcoming ice creams called “Rajwada Kulfi” at just INR 10/- which we all happily enjoyed in the summer heat!
It was now time to move towards culmination of the meet-up where we could know each other a little better and take cognizance of contributions that fellow LGs make to maps and about upcoming meet ups.
Part Three : Introductions, Contributions, Local Quiz & Violin!
After treat to eyes and tummy, we then moved to the locality park. What’s a Sunday without a little time spent together on green grass at a park! I have enjoyed playing a quiz master all my life ? So I decided to quiz all the fellow local guides to see how well they know the lovely city of Delhi!
So I prepared a small questionnaire and to everyone’s surprise the winner turned out to be a local guide of Jaipur city who knew Delhi more than the people of Delhi themselves! I guess thats the joy of meet-ups it surprises you with new people all the time.
We moved on to discussing how to make better contributions to maps, capturing 360 degree photos and how is everyone prepping up for their entries to Connect Live 2019. Everyone got to know each other a little better, tonnes of selfies pictures and conversations followed. We concluded the meet up with Local Guide Aasif playing tunes of Godfather & Titanic!
Some of us later decided to try south Indian breakfast at nearby local eatery. Special thanks to Dhruv and Priya for clicking tonnes of great pictures. You can check complete album of pictures contributed by Local Guides here
This meet up was attended by people from 8 states and it was first meet up for 14 people. Atleast 12 people signed up for local guides programme after getting to know about it at the walk. I can’t thank enough every local guide who took out time and zealously took part in this meet-up! Art soothes our souls and lives and we can not afford to let it die - this has been the message of this meet-up cum art walk! Special thanks to Mehak for helping me do this meet up
I could go on and on and on sharing my experiences form this meet-up but I’d like to know what was the most joyful part of the meetup for you and how could meet-ups be made better!
Enthusiastically looking forward to host more such meet-ups to discover art, cultures and to fill maps with more public arts! I had time of life thank you for reading this long recap! Do let me know what you think about this meet up in the comments !
