Bosky Khanna By Express News Service BENGALURU: Visitors of Cubbon Park had noticed that a rock at the park was defaced recently. It bore a graffiti of ‘SA’ and ‘SB’ in red hearts. Thanks to the Ugly Indian team, it has been cleaned up on Tuesday and became a pleasant surprise for visitors and morning walkers. The UI team partnered with Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) and informed officials of Horticulture department while taking up the cleaning drive. The drive gains importance as it has been done just when the BBMP and the Horticulture Department are planning to improve facilities in the prime lung space of the city under the Smart City programme. The defaced rock at Cubbon Park “It takes just five minutes to deface public property or a heritage site. However, it took us almost the entire day to scrub it clean. We saw the graffiti during the public consultation meeting and after that we could not rest. We informed the BBMP and the horticulture department officials, then started our job. We scrubbed it clean with permitted acids and paint removers, ensuring that the stone’s structure is not tampered with,” said a UI volunteer. Not many know that this rock has a history as old as that of Lalbagh. It is a part of the city’s heritage and is a geological monument, representing the Peninsular Gneiss. “While the Lalbagh rock is well preserved, the one at Cubbon park, which is also a prime tourist attraction, has been neglected due to which it became a place for people to show their ‘artistic talent’. We are willing to join hands with horticulture department to fix other such rocks,” the volunteer said. Recollecting the anti-CAA graffiti done at Church Street recently, a BBMP official said that the police put another layer of paint on it to wipe it out, but ideally it should have been white-washed. The method adopted by UI shows the way, that public properties cannot be defaced and people should join hands to protect them.

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