Sign of the times

The septuagenarian Charan is one of the legends of the signboard painting business and his studio Charan Arts the go to place for juice signboards all across north India. Charan grew up watching movie hoardings and knew from his school days that painting was what he wanted to do. His work was in demand in the past and his styles with faceted fonts and perspective effects continue to be duplicated by lesser artists. He has no issues with the fact that Delhi wants digital prints of cute fair babies and imported fruit for juice stalls. “There is no point trying to stick to a romantic notion of what once was. Times will change and so must we. If we make a flex (digital printed banners),we ensure that a regular computer operator cannot replicate it.” He takes for example a font that is synonymous with him – the satrangi (seven coloured) style created more than 40 years ago and inspired by the Railley(an 50’s English Cycle company) logo. Each letter is first faceted and each facet is coloured with one of the seven colours of the rainbow.

Facets facing each other are colored in complementary colors to mimic light and shade. The trick with this font is that the opposite colors have to be complementary and simultaneously merge into each other without turning black. Charan says,“Till today our competitors have tried to recreate this effect on a computer but have never been able to. On taking out a digital print,the colours have always formed black.” Hand-painted banners are still very much in demand in cities further away from the capital. “You can even see our banners near the Nepal border.”

Charan’s studio in the neighbourhood of Top Sarai,just behind the demolished Jubilee Cinema in Chandni Chowk,is piled with banners hawking juices and shakes. He no longer paints,his son Subhash has that responsibility although Charan sometimes paints profiles of actors. Subhash and the other workers at Charan Arts have worked overtime in the winters to deal with the demand in the summer months for juice banners. Following the ban on sugarcane juice during summers,the banners now carry ‘mango shake’ painted in white.

Actors past and present are grace the banners. From Karisma Kapoor pressing a tumbler of juice to her cheeks to Aamir Khan in Ghajini pose clasping a glass between his hands. There is even a 10 ft by 4 ft banner with an ultra realistic Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif sipping from a single glass using a Y-shaped straw. Only a few days after it has been completed,Yakoub,a juice stall owner from Moradabad,snaps it up with only a token attempt at bargaining. Folding up his purchase he says: “I have always been a fan of hand work. Isme safai aati hai jo vinyl me nahi hoti. (There is clarity to this work which is not there in digital prints)”

Charan says he has begun training his grandson 11-year-old Nikhil. “He will be the best artist yet. Of course,there will be a market for him. Computers cannot create a good banner. For that you will always require artists. Hi-fi designer log to yeh kaam to nahi karenge. Jab tak sadak rahegi tab tak to ham sadak ke sipahi rahenge. (Big designers are unlikely to do this work. As long as someone has to,we will be there.) ”