Signs of the times

I absolutely adore the handpainted signs that dot both urban and rural India; there's something so refreshing about the small, personal flourishes that make the advertisements somehow less intrusive, yet still inviting.

I've started a Flickr pool with pictures of some of the signs I've seen (though not all; sometimes I forget to add images to my set), but the examples I found in Mumbai were so excellent I thought it would be worthwhile to post them here.

It's not many a city that features public art of an elephant god, a woman bedecked in her finest sari, a bouquet of tulips, and a pair of kissing pigs.

Public service announcement!

Hey friends, I had to post this, because every time one of the monkey public service announcements comes out, I crack up. It's just so...foreign. I'm not saying they're irrelevant, I'm saying that, if one was to issue a "monkey menace" announcement in NYC, well...the world might stop spinning for a few minutes. Highlights of the text, in case you can't read it: "Monkeys are wild animals, don't domesticate them with bananas" -- isn't that contradicted by the happy monkey holding a banana? Let's stay on message, department of environment, forests, and wildlife; "Monkeys are monkeys" -- no, I thought they were elephants! (OK, I know maybe they're alluding to Hanuman and his monkey-ly importance in the Hindu panoply, but still.) All jests aside, seriously, don't feed the monkeys. When S and I were in Chail with my parents, we were loading food and stuffs into our car and left it unattended for a few minutes; when we went outside, there was a monkey in the driver's seat, and I ran at him with flailing fists, seriously alarming the hotel personnel, who were wondering just how they would explain a way a monkey-induced firang death in the peaceful mountain town. Just don't do it.