Though it was Artyom's first trip to India, and the first abroad, I was pretty sure, that it would be alright, and in fact it was.
Of course, it was not fast. First we needed to find Mr Mishtra, the owner of the building on the Central Ghat. We have agreed about the painting 6 months before, but I was not sure he remembered. After all, we were just another tourists in the army of them coming to Varanasi every day. So we called Shylesh, who knew all the answers in the world, and he confirmed, that our arrangement was alive and kicking. And so here we are, approaching Mr Mishtra after the evening Aarti at Dasashwamedh ghat
and here we are at his house, right next to the wall, which will soon be ours.
Actually, Mr. Mishtra had only one question - what do we want from him. We needed only his permission, which he gave us willingly and warned us to keep an eye on our belongings - the monkeys were very keen to grab and run with something valuable. And he also instructed his assistants to provide us with everything we needed for our creative assignment.
The assistants gave us the ladder, which, we were lucky again, was lying seemingly abandoned like the local cows right in front of the wall. So we finished the first goals successfully and moved out to look for Pintu, the Varanasi graffiti maker, who had drawn our announcements on the ghats last spring.
We were lucky again, Pintu also was not hard to find. Quite predictably we had to spend around 10 minutes explaining to his friends that we wanted to see him, and then we waited for half an hour in the small shop, that his friends held - it was not our first trip to Varanasi and we knew very well, that the core principle here is never to hurry.
Soon Pintu arrived, and though at first he was puzzled to see Europeans waiting for him, he remembered me and smiled broadly. His friends helped us to make him understand, what we wanted this time - naturally Pintu was not committed to mastering English, not many foreigners want to make a graffiti in Varanasi.
Then we took our time to relax, walked down the ghats to explore local graffiti. There we were surprised to see some really good work - like Space Invader's marks. We will write about that later.
Next day we waited for Pintu at the set time, though in Varanasi nothing is really set, if you know what I mean. Those formalities like being punctual are really evasive there. So Pintu arrived with his team and started painting quite fast, with monkeys jogging up and down the roofs.
Artyom considered the ladder for a while and we decided that it was not meant for foreigners to climb as high as some 5th floor. So we decided to let the guys do the preliminary draft.
Pintu's team was really fast and in less then an hour they have made the base for the drawing with a scrub brush, which we use for cleaning bathrooms in Russia. The rolls? Yes, they know about the rolls, but the brushes are fare more handy )
The priming coat of paint was white, and Artom also took the brush to paint the bottom of the wall, but looking at how the Varanasi graffiti pros worked, we concluded that the paint, that Artyom spent on a couple of square meters would have been enough for Indian artists a couple of walls like that.
The we made the draft drawing. And we were again surprised how Indians made the long straight lines - with a string and chalk. This ancient method was mentioned in books that I read about Indian paintings, from 18th century.
And here you can see how to make a perfect cirle. Well, almost perfect )
Artyom had pieces of cardboard and a sophisticated pencil, which in turn surprised Pintu.
What the..?
Artyom made the M letter himself, because Pintu certainly had no idea about the proportions of Moscow subway logo ) And we climbed another ladder - much more short one, which didn't look that scary.
In one Russian cartoon was a very wise observation - if you stay put, everyone, who you want to meet, will pass somewhere near you. This is exactly right for Varanasi - instead of moving in circles around the city you'd better just sit down and relax. If you can do that, you will be able to meet a load of most interesting people. I will make a post about all of them a bit later.
So we were painting and painting, and the life on the ghats just moved on..
By the evening the wall was ready by some 80 percent
And we celebrated this in Fuji Ganga restaurant, marking our stay there with a drawing on its wall also.
The next day
Now it's finished!
We didn't waste all our pain on the wall thoug.
Stay put, we have more stories about our stay in Varanasi!
