Just another hoarding..

Inattentional blindness, also known as perceptual blindness, is a psychological lack of attention to an obvious event or a thing that is not associated with any vision defects. Owing to this, we often fail to notice those unnecessarily huge and dramatically colorful banners and hoardings with photographs of some unknown faces smiling at us as we pass by. Decorated atop buildings and lined across the streets, these hoardings usually belong to some local politicians or some influential personalities in the neighborhood. If we take a closer look, we almost instantly get hold of the hidden story behind the hoardings. Let us today take a moment to pay the due attention these hoardings have been asking us all the while.

At the bottom ends of these hoardings are some awkward photographs of a dozen or so party workers who are usually nothing more than part-time goons. Their primary responsibilities include roaming through the city streets holding party flags on their motorbikes and disrupting traffic all along. They find a place on the banner as well-wishers to the local politicians. The pride of being shortlisted to appear on the hoarding is evident on their faces.

Above the relatively smaller-passport-sized enlarged photographs of a dozen, well-wishers is usually the larger-than-life-sized portrait of the local politician- waving at you with all glory and a broad smile. Also, it is here that we find out the reason why this extraordinary piece of art was created in the first place- turns out to be a birthday greeting usually; because a simple text or a call to the concerned person would have been too mainstream, isn't it?

Above the flashy texts and the photograph of a waving politician are a few photographs of the senior members of the party, who are portrayed as the guiding angels for the Tier 2 and Tier 3 photographs. After all, our beloved local politician may end up fetching a party ticket for the next election if the senior leaders are well honored. (Or flattered)

Now just as we roll our eyes off this plastic display of mutual respect in total disregard, we come across another banner with the same story but different characters. It’s just a matter of time before we realize these banners are virtually everywhere- smiling, waving, and perhaps even laughing at us! For we do nothing but allow them to degrade our environment furthermore with every single banner. These banners are mostly made up of PVC- Polyvinyl Chloride, an extremely cheap non-biodegradable synthetic plastic polymer. What’s worse? Only about 1% of this PVC is recycled. It’s time we realize these hoardings do come at a price. We must raise our voices against these unwanted hoardings and urge the authorities to regularise their rampant use. After all, we anyway don’t need those unknown creepy faces staring and smiling at us for no apparent reason while they gradually pollute our surroundings, do we?