Mumbai: Cooperage football stadium wall scores old world goal

The wall outside Cooperage football stadium has been painted in black and white with a ‘heritage Bombay’ theme, focussing on nostalgia and iconic buildings, giving it an old world feel. Pics/Bipin Kokate

City's wall art has taken off with a welcome fervour during the pandemic downtime with Mumbai's walls serving as canvas for numerous recent artworks. The wall outside Cooperage football stadium has become a gratis, good looking streetside art gallery. The wall has been painted in black and white with a ‘heritage Bombay' theme. There is a focus on nostalgia and iconic buildings, giving it an old world feel. Sachin D Halde, an artist from Palghar who brought his many years of artistic experience, said, "I started painting at the age of 16, today I am 41." He added, "It was important that we roll back the years and take the people to another era with these paintings."

Bella Shah, a Colaba resident and part of My Dream Colaba (MDC), said, "This wall project began on October 24 and was completed this month. We have colour on walls everywhere, so we decided to do something different and conceptualised this in black‘n'white. South Mumbai means heritage buildings, and parts of it still have the old world charm clinging to them despite new construction. We decided that the wall must reflect that ethos."

Shah and Maria Chico, another MDC member, said, "We are part of a Facebook group featuring old Bombay. Some of the pictures from there have been used as reference, we got some others from Google searches; it is a mix of commuting (a camel carriage is part of the panel) and landmark institutions reflecting the old architectural styles." Chico said, "This is a buzzing location; it has the football stadium behind, then we have Sailors Home, and two or three Gymkhanas. This is the road that is used to go towards Mantralaya. So, we do have a ready viewership."

The feedback has been great and several Mumbaikars have been pleasantly surprised at the memories this evokes. "A friend from Bandra recently remarked about how she was transported to her earlier days in SoBo. There have been a couple of positive reactions from former South Mumbai residents who are living overseas now too; mainly the OMG (Oh My Gosh) moments when they saw pictures of the wall on social media," laughed Chico.

Sachin D Halde, an artist from Palghar who painted the wall (right) Jeevan E Wankhede, another artist who took part

Artist Jeevan E Wankhede, who worked on the wall along with his "childhood friend" Halde, said they were also accompanied by a couple of other artist friends, namely Preet and Uttam. Wankhede, a Worli resident, said, "Walls pose a challenge as the surface is not smooth and may be very rough, broken in parts, indented, even slightly tilted, so to get your lines spot on when there are such breaks takes skill which is born from experience. If we can give Mumbaikars a moment to stand and stare and if a generation rewinds to the old times through this project, it is all worth the effort." Though the accent is on the ‘new' normal today, this wall is a reminder that the ‘old' never goes out of mind, or style.

24 Oct
Day when the project started