Lane after lane shows off brightly painted huts of all shapes and size. The orange gives way to shocking red which merges with the lilac. An eye-catching royal blue imbues a broken wooden door with a mysterious sense of life. Smudged white fills up the worn-out planks of the door to create a design that defies decay. If you hadn’t only minutes earlier hopped over fly-infested drains and negotiated pockmarked paths, you would think you were looking at a modern art installation. But this is Sanjay Camp, a slum lying hidden behind Chanakyapuri’s tony environs.
From the tree-lined avenues of Moti Bagh, Sanjay Camp looks like any other disadvantaged area. But within the urban underbelly where 2,200 families live, there is now a colourful world of street art. From flowers and animals to cartoons figures and expressions of empowerment and education, the walls of Sanjay Camp are symbols of brave dignity. Residents emerge from the shanties to boast about their houses. A shy Anita gestures at her house and says, “Log kehtey hain tumhara ghar sabsey sundar hai.”
This colour riot happened on March 17 and 18, when over 400 young people of Delhi University — current and former students, many associated with the art and social service societies of the university colleges — converged on the slum to give new colour to life in Sanjay Camp.
Read more of this in a report by Ambika Pandit published in The Times of India....
This effort can be undertaken elsewhere too - this will give such a change in the living environment of the lakhs living in urban slums.
