Monday, May 25, 2015

Bollywood Blooms at Bandra streets



Roaming around the streets of bandra, you can easily find several wall painted bollywood posters smiles back to you with a vibrant color. A wall painting of the famous movie poster of ‘Anarkali ‘(1953) catches the eye of nearly every pedestrian walking at Waroda road, Bandra. This is the not an only area you can find big wall paintings of superstars,  there are eight other landmarks  where the big wall paintings painted on the streets of Bandra. You can easily find a wall painting on the road near Mount Marry Church where Bollywood Legend ‘Amitabh Bachchan’ poses one of his famous styles from the movie Deewar (1973).  For Tributing India’s First Superstar Rajesh Khanna, he painted his biggest wall painting ever at the street of Chapel Road, Bandra. As every street has its story and so one of the crowded streets in Mumbai gets a new bollywood story now, where even an outsider can relate to bollywood with these big murals painting and also feel that he is actually in bollywood city now.
         If we look back at bollywood historical era of 50’s to the late 80’s, the art of painted bollywood posters and big banners and hoardings were one of the most convenient way to promote their upcoming movies.  Since the digitization and prolific technologies film promoters now prefer new printing options and make thousand copies of same movie posters within a few minutes. So the painting art of bollywood posters which was there till the late eighties got extinct thereafter. Now with the magic hands of unique Painter Artist ‘Ranjeet Dahiya’ people can relive the moment of that era by looking at the amazing street paintings of their favourite stars.
Speaking about his passion for Bollywood Actors Mural paintings, Ranjeet Dahiya (35) uncovered many facets of his life which made him inspire to do something different and now city’s one of the rare and most unique wall painters. “I started my career as white washer after my school and I use to white wash on houses and streets. One day I was just white washing at a school and a principal just came and asked as, do you know someone who will paint a Goddess Saraswati in our school. So I told, I can paint it and I painted a 6’ 4’’ ft and it turned out very well and I got happy that I did that. So then at the age of 19, I thought by how long I will do whitewash. So I decided to be a painter and started learning paintings and even joined an advertising company for a job and so I paint ads on the wall at remote villages of Panipat. My parents won’t like my work at that time and were unhappy as I use to roam and paint at several places. Then I decided to study fine arts for being much more prolific in painting and after completing my studies in Fine Arts I moved to Mumbai. I had an Image in my mind that in Mumbai all stars were live just next to eachother and I was really fond of Bollywood, but when I came here there is nothing which I relate to as bollywood or say that yes I am in Bollywood City. So I decided why not give this city its identity for what it actually stands for. So I decided to do a wall painting and ‘Anarkali’ is my first wall painting. After that I got appreciation and so I decided to give my tribute to 100 Years of Indian Cinema and also continue my work to make more Wall Paintings across the streets of Bandra. “
                                He is so passionate about his work that he paints all of his wall paintings with its own costs which is around 40 to 50 thousand each and the costliest of his painting is of Rajesh Khanna in which he spent more than 60 thousands .It takes him an average of 10 days to make this big mural paintings of Bollywood starts at the streets. He started his bollywood Painting works on streets in 2008 and he has painted around eight wall paintings on the streets till now.  Besides painting, he also gives lectures in colleges on art and designing and earns his livelihood.
                 For future Plans, he has in mind to make a big mural paintings of legendry actor Guru Dutt, Dilip Kumar, Kishor Kumar and Saira banu on streets as a special tribute to them
                                            


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