Art against addiction: New mural in Byappanahalli addresses drug issue

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Talking Walls, a brand-new mural at the Byappanahalli Police Station, facing the busy Old Madras Road, focuses on raising awareness about drug abuse | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

It began with a tour through an alley in the vibrant city of Ghent, Belgium, a few years ago.

Nivedita Dutt, a director at the Rotary E-Club of Bangalore, the first Internet-based Rotary Club in Karnataka, was visiting her son there when she encountered that “alley full of graffiti on both sides. And it was fabulous,” she remembers. “Coming back to India, it struck me that we could also do a similar sort of thing.”

In 2024, the Rotary E-club collaborated with the Karnataka Police, bringing in Kolkata-based artist Sayam Porey to paint a wall adjacent to the Adugodi Police Station and creating a mural titled Graffiti for Hope here. “The focus back then was on women abuse, cybercrime and drug abuse,” says Nivedita, who more recently approached the Baiyappanahalli Police Station to request them to give a wall for a similar kind of social awareness project. “They told me that they were on a project titled Beda Bro to stop drug abuse, and had taken it upon themselves to stop the drug menace by 2028,” she says.

This was the start of Talking Walls, a brand-new mural at the Byappanahalli Police Station facing the busy Old Madras Road, focused on exactly this: drug abuse. The mural, again executed by Sayam and supported by the Rotary E-Club, Bengaluru City Police, and Banna Paint Company, brings to life the anguish of the drug menace and enhances Bengaluru’s visual richness, according to a press release from the Rotary e-club of Bengaluru. “I think a human being is more open to accepting something being depicted on a wall,” believes Ashis Dutta, also a director of the Rotary E-club, contrasting this to a message on a billboard, “where you consciously know someone is trying to sell you something.”

Bright swathes of colour, sunshine, turquoise and magenta, form the background of the wall in Byappanahalli, on which Sayam has painted a variety of objects, including the Bengaluru City Police logo, a pair of handcuffed hands, a large syringe, an eye, a chained skeleton and the Rotary E-club of Bengaluru motif. Interspersed are graffiti in both English and Kannada, including the words Beda Bro, an appeal not to take drugs.

“I am also a graffiti writer, something many people think is vandalism, often referring to us as criminals. But, for the first time, a graffiti artist has painted on a police wall,” says Sayam, adding that he hopes that this will change people’s perception of graffiti. By using graffiti in murals and street art to drive an important message, “it changes their mind,” he believes, recalling how passersby often appreciated him while he worked.

The goal now is to scale up this initiative, Ashis explains. “We will need more clubs to join in and extend to maybe 50-odd walls in Bengaluru,” he says, pointing out that they intend to collaborate with other people, such as the police and administrative officials, on this.