Donning a spacesuit, an actor dressed as an astronaut walked down a busy street in Bengaluru’s Herohalli. (Source: Baadal Nanjundaswamy/ Facebook) Donning a spacesuit, an actor dressed as an astronaut walked down a busy street in Bengaluru’s Herohalli. (Source: Baadal Nanjundaswamy/ Facebook)

To highlight just how bad the potholes are in Bengaluru, an artist has come up with a quirky video of a man dressed as an astronaut walking through them as if it is the surface of the moon. The video comes days before India’s lunar mission Chandrayaan 2 is set to land on the south side side of the moon on September 7.

Baadal Nanjundaswamy, a famous street artist in the city, has always come up with quirky ideas to draw the attention of civic bodies to the problem of potholes. This time he decided to make an actor ‘moonwalk’ down Bengaluru’s streets in Herohalli given the buzz around the Indian Space Research Organisation’s lunar mission.

Popular theatre actor and film star, Poornachandra Mysore, walked down the street in a silver spacesuit, tailor-made from a local costume artist. The video quickly went viral across social media with the artist and the actor getting a lot of praise online.

Many commended the artist for how much it looked like the lunar surface at the start of the video, while some tagged concerned officials and ministers to spread the word. Talking to indianexpress.com about the project, Nanjundaswamy said he did not “anticipate the visuals will have such uncanny resemblance.”

“The entire thing was shot on a mobile phone camera, no additional lights were used. So naturally, I didn’t expect it to turn out the way it did,” Nanjundaswamy said over telephone, adding it cost him less than Rs 8000 to shoot the video.

“We shot it multiple times at around 10 pm in the night on Saturday, hoping the road will be empty but still there was some traffic. But it was good as an indicator’s light from a vehicle helped to create the dramatic effect,” he said.

Nanjundaswamy said he was delighted with the attention and appreciation for the latest video.

This is not the first time Nanjundaswamy has caught the attention of people. In 2015, he planted a life-sized crocodile in a 12-feet-long pot hole on the Sulthanpalya Main Road in north Bangalore, which garnered praised from all, including Anand Mahindra, and resulted in officials fixing the potholes.

In 2017, he turned a big crater on a road into a pool and collaborated with another artist who dressed as a mermaid and sat in it.

Asked if he expects a similar outcome this time round, Nanjundaswamy said he was “hopeful”.

“Pothole problems in Bengaluru is so rampant, and the fixing is slow, so I hope they take quick action like they did last few times,” he said.

Here’s how people reacted to the video:

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