CHAKLI CIRCLE

There is something about the Chakli round-about - it's so absurd.   In fact all the round-about islands in the town are faintly absurd.  Chakli means 'bird' - so it is the 'Bird Circle'.  Panels of mosaic, on the round-about, depict birds in flight from different angles, so that no matter which direction you approach from, there'll be a mosaic bird in flight and in a cordoned off area next to it, the Municipality throws bird seed down to encourage flocks of feeding birds, so that it becomes a 'Bird Circle' in reality, with groups of birds rising and settling continually throughout the day. Quite ingenious !

Then there is the 'Rhinoceros round-about ' - the enormous animal is entirely made of  thin strips of iron - so that this weightiest of animals becomes 'see through' !  By contrast the 'Banyan tree',  which in nature is made up of weird hanging tendrils and roots, is depicted in a sculpture on the round-about as a solid lump of impenetrable concrete.

By far the strangest sculpture is the one on an intersection in Productivity Road -  a startling white, glazed terracotta  life-size cow and suckling calf !  Cows wander the streets and are protected and revered in all towns - I wonder what they think of this pristine beast, as they amble past ?