Art comes in many forms, and is not the monopoly of those
few who have been fortunate enough to have been able to go to art schools and
get trained scientifically. There are those who can create art wherever they
go, and on whatever surface they can find.
We have twenty thousand visitors a day, whose primary
intention is to see their near and dear ones who are ailing and are receiving
treatment in the hospital. Perhaps as a token of gratitude towards the hospital
which treats their relatives/friends for free, they leave behind a piece of art
on the hospital walls. They create art in red color. They have two hands, but
they prefer to create art with their mouths, and can be called Mouth Graffiti artists.
They come to the hospital well prepared with their art supplies. They chew a mixture
of a special leaf, calcium hydroxide, tobacco, permissible food flavor, and
some components that cannot be put down here because they are unknown to the
English speaking world. Mastication without swallowing results in development
of a mouthful of red liquid that is used by them as paint. Most of the average
artists create art on the walls of the staircases, corners and walls of the
corridors. Some advanced artists prefer a wall of an electric substation that
stands opposite the first floor corridor of the main building t a distance of
two meters. There they stand holding the railing for support, raise their heads
at an angle with the horizontal, and spit on the wall. Some of the accomplished
ones reach spots a meter higher than their mouths. The wall looks something
like this.
There are 563 such patterns on the wall and the number is
rising. The electricity supplying company does not paint the wall, because it
hopes that one day all the blanks will be filled up by the artists and the wall
will be entirely red. The hospital does not paint the wall, possibly because
the artists need to express their art, and if that expression is suppressed,
they will express it elsewhere, where it may not look very appropriate. Such
ingenuity! Such finesse! I want to capture one of them on video doing it, and
another pointing out proudly how high he reached. Unfortunately my duties keep
me busy and I cannot get around to shooting ay video. If I can manage that some
day, I will post the videos for you to see.
