City-based art group The Yellow Cab recently staged a public art event to voice support for Irom Sharmila. The draconian act for which Sharmila has been fasting for the past 11 years completed 25 years on that dat. The symbolic human representation of Irom Sharmila by TYC activists was enacted near dighalipukhuri where platform was eventually staged to voice ones opinion.

TYC initiated this art campaign as a collective effort keeping in mind the views and opinions of hundreds and thousands of people involved in the peace building process of Manipur. It also sought to bring the attention of the people to the ongoing crisis in Manipur.

Talking about the initiative, TYC member Annirudha Barua said, “We have been travelling to various places meeting different people belonging to various class and sections of society- people in the market, school, colleges, offices, railway station, etc. We introduce ourselves as TYC and try to interact with them. We have been asking them about Manipur’s AFSPA act and Irom sharmila, and trying to know their views regarding this issue. It is a sharing process – we try to tell them what we know and try to learn from them about what we don’t.”

“We have been questioning them on issues like why the Centre has failed to act even after Sharmila completed 11 years of fasting? Why is that they are refusing to acknowledge the problem? Are they trying to cover the situation? These are healthy exchange of queries amongst all who are involved in the art campaign,” Baruah said.

For a month now, TYC has been collecting the views of the public in general by taking a portrait photo. The expression given in the photograph necessarily expresses the individual sentiment behind the cause. We prefer the photographs to be in black and white as it represents the past and presently it is done with five hundred to seven hundred photographs which express different views about the said subject.