A unique confluence of Australia-India friendship is on display through Tramjatra project of Melbourne trams. It is a showcase of Kolkata's artwork on trams in Melbourne and promoting India's culture in Australia.
The brainchild behind Tramjatra is Melbourne's tram conductor Roberto D'Andrea, who by chance ended up being in Kolkata on the insistence of his then girlfriend.
When he landed in Kolkata (then Calcutta), being a connie, he immediately fell in love with the Kolkata trams and wanted to know more about its history and heritage.
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And that is when he found the local tram conductors, who introduced him to the higher authorities and politicians. After years of consultation and discussion, back and forth between Kolkata and Melbourne, the first Tramjatra was kicked off in 1996 in Kolkata.
Roberto gets a bit emotional recollecting his journey. He reminiscences, “In Melbourne we celebrate the Trams, we do a lot of cultural festivals around the trams. We paint the trams, we set-up exhibitions inside the trams, and we said to them, look we can come and do it in Kolkata and that would be a way to promote tramways as an environmental… that’s a good citizen of the city to lower air pollution, congestion. So, it built up and there was a lot of work either way. So, October in 1996, I packed up a traveling tram show, with the help of Mick Douglas and Andy Miller and a great collective of people in Melbourne and arrived in Kolkata.”
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Part of that Tramjatra campaign in 1996, included decorating four trams, which was the beginning of an annual festival in the city. Roberto’s work helped in forming a sister relationship between Kolkata’s Belgachia and South Melbourne tram depots.
Roberto was successful in bringing Tramjatra to Melbourne in 2017 as a part of Melbourne Festival 2017.
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Roberto says, “The recent Tramjatra in Melbourne has been beautiful… we are celebrating anniversaries through the two recent Tramjatras – December 2016 in Kolkata and through 2017 & 18 in Melbourne. So, this is like a greatest hits tram… and what we’ve wanted to do because we decorated so many trams in Kolkata, in-fact 12 up to this point. We wanted to put a piece of all those decorations on the Melbourne Trams.”
Roberto collaborated with the Indian-origin graphic designer and artist Bushra Hassan – the designer of Tramjatra in Melbourne and found it quite interesting and satisfying. He feels Bushra was able to create a design quite effectively as per his vision and Indian tribal, street and truck art essence.
Bushra Hassan was born in an artistic family in the Indian city of Lucknow. She came to Australia around four years ago. The Trams of Melbourne attracted her all the time and she craved for an opportunity to create artwork for the trams.
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About her Tramjatra journey, Bushra says, “Well three years back, I connected with Multi-cultural Arts Victoria, that supports many of the artists and it was through them that I got to know about this project and Roberto. I got to know that he is an activist and he is working passionately on this project for years. I really found it very interesting and we created a proposal for the festival. Since, it was our first attempt, it was not successful, maybe the design was not as per the requirement. Still, we continued our collaboration and we ended up designing for Kolkata trams. Which was approved and the local artists in Kolkata painted the trams on the basis of that design. By 2017, we were quite prepared with this project and then the designs were approved and now our artwork-based trams are running in Melbourne till April 2018.”
For Bushra designing Tramjatra was something different and challenging at the same time. She got a chance to revisit some of her traditional artwork. She explains, “Tramjatra’s artwork is based mainly on Indian tribal art and truck art. It is heavily inspired by the Indian culture. I have created art work based on the Indian truck and rickshaw art in India which is very funky and kitsch style decorated. It was my inspiration… I wanted that when people see the running trams, they instantly associate it with India. People in other countries associate India first with colors and vibrancy, and only then they look into the details. Therefore, my idea was to make the trams look very colourful… and then provide detailing in that colour. That detailing was associated with a certain story that I prepared later, but my first agenda was to make it colorful.”
Bushra has been quite overwhelmed by the positive response of the public to Tramjatra, she exclaims, “people have appreciated this quite a lot. Only yesterday, I saw a Facebook post by an Indian group, who have put up the picture and written that they are so proud of this.”
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Bushra further adds, “It feels good, not only to know that the Indian community here is feeling proud that India is being showcased through these trams in Melbourne for six months. Even the Australian community is very impressed with this, they have loved the color and vibrancy and something that is a bit different from the usual… As one mostly sees shades of grey and subtle artwork here, but this was something shocking for them… I received really great feedback from people.”
