Ahmedabad: Gandhi murals on Shahibaug underpass to get fresh lease of life

Additional city engineer (central zone) of AMC, Amit Patel, said they were working on the renovation in two-stages – short-term and long-term. In the short term of one month, tiles from the extremely damaged parts of the underpass walls will be removed, and in the long term of four to five months, all the tiles of the murals will be removed to subject the underpass walls to water-proofing treatment, after which fresh tiles will be laid to rebuild the mural.

“We have seen extreme water seepage that has damaged the walls, also because of the railway track that runs over the underpass,” Patel said. “So we will have to coordinate with the railways as well so as to stop their trains along this route, at the time of the treatment. The landscape design shall be undertaken which is expected to be finalised within the next one to two months.”

He added, “The existing mural shall then be replaced by new tiles, but the theme and design of Gandhi will remain the same as the existing one.”

Ashwin Dhandukia, who had worked on installing a part of the mural earlier, says the project was conceptualised by CEPT (Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology), led by Rajesh Sagara. Speaking to this paper, Dhandukia recalled, “The project was awarded to our firm (Italia Glass Mosaic), where I worked single-handedly, staying back until late at night, designing. They told us the theme that they were looking at was Gandhiji’s struggles and his transformation from a common man to a mahatma. They also told us they want to depict his simplistic lifestyle. I would go to the site, picture how the design should go on the wall in tandem with the curvature, so that someone who is driving by can view it as a continuous work, telling his story, rather than as a standalone image of Gandhiji.”

He said there were other challenges too. “The lower part of the wall was uneven, there were holes in the wall…which we had to keep open. Each one-by-one inch tile was like a pixel and we had a limited colour scheme back then, making shading a challenge.”

The glass mosaic mural was first designed on CAD (computer-aided design) and then large sheets of the printed design was scaled to the wall’s dimensions.