There is something wrong with the parrot drawn on a black wall in this uneven Ghatkopar slum. Its neck is missing and it seems to be inspecting its own back at an odd angle, as if searching for the neck. The parrot, it turns out, used to be an owl. An artist had drawn the nocturnal bird first but then the rustic residents of Sahyadri 2—one of the many slums perched like Lego blocks on this Asalpha hillock—decided that they didn't want to wake up to "a bad omen". So, his chalk hastily replaced the hawk-like beak with a pouty, curved bill and, just like that, an inauspicious bird of prey became a loved domestic pet.From the Mumbai Metro, you won't be able to see this mutant bird. Neither would you be able to see the mural of a cat sitting inside a soapy bubble inspired by a resident’s kitten. All you can see of this Asalpha hilltop from the air-conditioned train is a loud, multi-coloured installation of shanties that is likely to make filmmaker Rohit Shetty go: "Next song location."Drenched in 400 litres of paint by around 750 people, Asalpha is not only distracting Mumbai Metro users, as intended, but also seeing foreigners with SLR cameras ascend its stone stairs. Just a few days ago, an unfamiliar buzzing noise that sounded "like a giant fly", made Krishnamma—a chatty, nose-ring-sporting elderly resident—abandon the quilt she was stitching and step outside her tiled 10x10-ft-home. Above, three drones circled her freshly-coated neighbourhood. “Flying cameras with red and blue lights,” recalls Krishnamma as she winnows grains of wheat. A "BMC survey" that began right after the army of paint-can-wielding volunteers applied the first coat on December 2 had made Krishnamma somewhat suspicious of the bout of charity. Soon, government officials were taking measurements of her house and profile photos of the entire family. "The last time such a survey happened was 18 years ago," says Krishnamma. Unfounded rumours of razing and redevelopment now haunt the air of this enameled pincode that finds itself in the grip of sudden, unsolicited spotlight. "What exactly is the paint for?" at least three residents ask.It's a question that Harvard degree-holder Dedeepya Reddy answered many times before founding 'Chal Rang De'—a non-profit initiative that tied up with the Mumbai Metro and paint manufacturer Snowcem Paints—to give the drab vertical slum a postcard-like makeover reminiscent of Italy 's vibrant Positano. “I even showed residents Photoshopped after-renditions of the slum,” says Reddy. As a Metro traveller, the artist in her would cringe at the morose sight of the grey hilltop houses, whose walls often had to wait for Diwali for a fresh external coat of dull distemper colours. An eyepopping paint job could change the perception of Mumbai's slums, decided Reddy, the welltravelled cofounder of creative agency Fruitbowl Digital.Soon, after getting residents on board, Reddy got her team to create a website and found several hundred volunteers, including senior citizens, online who finished painting 175 walls in two weekends. The muralists came later. Reddy's brief to them was: "Reflect the life of Asalpha's locals or relate to them." So, besides its many women home entrepreneurs and cats, you will also find an astronaut dangling from a planet on a wall here—a reminder to local kids to dream big. “Many of my school friends have come over after the paint job,” says seventh grader Siddhesh Jadhav of nearby Shivneri Vidya Mandir school who chipped in by painting three walls.The day-long painting exercise stripped Reddy and her team-—who had never stepped into a slum before—of their own grim stereotypes. Spontaneous lunch invitations from residents gave them a peek into the obsessive cleanliness of the one-roomhome dwellers. “They are now like family to us,” says Reddy, who bit into pooran poli at the oneroom home of the affable Surekha Gade, a housewife whose son's wedding invitation card bore the names of their deceased pet cats 'Lalu' and 'Prasad'. Reddy now calls her "billiwali aunty".