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Policemen turn artists at Kala Ghoda Arts Festival
The Kala Ghoda Arts Festival this year is seeing an increased participation from Mumbai police personnel. As many as ten police personnel have formed an art forum within the force and exhibited their work at the popular cultural festival.
The cops now feel it’s time they take their art to the next level-meaning to “collaborate with private galleries”.
They attribute the increased participation to the “delightful Mumbai crowd”, a “supportive department” and a “growing fan base of Mumbai housewives and children” who are happy to buy their art. On display are paintings, sketches of heritage structures, photography and even replicas made of twigs.
Sanket Rathod (29), a police photographer who specialises in macro-photography of finger-prints at crime scenes, feels that such platforms allow one to experiment with new styles of photography. On the first day of the festival he was invited to a Bangalore Art festival thanks to his display of Khajuraho paintings. While his usual job allows him no creative licence, his pictures have “certain innocence”, in the words of a visitor.
Ankush Dhupkar, a constable with the Armoury Workshop at the Local Arms Division who “taught the art of Rangoli to the late president Shankar Dayal Sharma’s wife”, has exhibited unique landmarks painted in water colours. Inspector Nitin Bobade, 40, from the Protection and Security Branch, spent days researching the lives of tribes at places like Palghar and Mokada before he put up his Warli painting.
“Today the satisfaction is immense as since morning there have been so many visitors who want me to train them,” says Bobade. Police Naik from the control room, Sanjay Sawant, has put up a Warli painting on “a day in a police man’s life”. Constable Sanjay Sawant, whose work is otherwise restricted to analysis of travel documents at the Special Branch, takes his weekly off very seriously. “I just take my sketch bag and walk to all the heritage gothic structures in the city and make sketches,” he says. Sawant adds, “In the old structures, even the windows had a certain romance to them. One is not lucky to have such architecture anymore.” Constable Anand Waghmare has displayed replicas made of twigs including a replica of the old heritage building of Byculla Police Station.
The stall also showcased well illustrated and researched books on police history written by Police Inspector Rohidas Dusar. One of the books is on the Sports history of the Bombay Police from the days of the British. “Police can often surprise you. There is so much still left to discover about them,” adds Dusar.
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