A street apart

CHENNAI: From pulli kolams to manga kolams in vibrant hues; goli soda bottles to aadu puli aatam in powder blues; whimsical graffiti to abstract art with hidden Easter eggs, and familiar faces from the community — CE’s lensman Ashwin Prasath shows us how the walls speak at Kannagi Nagar, located off the city’s Old Mahabalipuram Road. The otherwise dull walls of the resettlement site have been adorned with murals by St+art India Foundation and Asian Paints, in collaboration with the Greater Chennai Corporation, making it a narrative storyboard — of people from the 24,000-odd households in the neighbourhood. Home to more than 80,000 people, the resettlement is currently soaking in not just colours but also in the joy of its new found title as the city’s first art district.