Love messages on public sculptures

So why do young men demonstrate their romance with signatures on trees in parks, walls of heritage structures and washroom doors?

Someone may well trace it to animal behavior.

Teen romeos have all the time in the word to engrave their names and flesh out the symbol of two hearts on church furniture even as the padre drifts into his sermon at Sunday morning Mass.

Their supposition is that 'their' girl may eye the creative scribbles the next Sunday and may either add to it or refuse to be amused.

The trunks of trees in co-ed school campuses carry layers of these cryptic messages. And you would wonder why this communication survives in the age of social media.

It is public and raw.

After Che Guevra, the image of a pierced heart is probably the most visually-strong one that survives Communism and anti-love zealots of Kochi.

One of our city's simple yet striking landmark is the KAJ Schmidt Memorial on Bessie Beach in Besant Nagar.

There are two kinds of people who get drawn to it. One lot are the love-lorn ones. They amble to the memorial, scribble a message of draw the figure of a bleeding heart on its walls, climb to its centre and drown in the sound of the waves.

The other set has a more urgent need - it runs up to the memorial, unzips in a jiffy and lets go. Much of what is watered over are the love notes.

All this on a simple memorial that celebrates the gallantry of Karl Schmidt who plunged into the sea when he found a few of his guests who were swimming, being carried away by the currents. Karl saved the men/women but he lost his life. His friends raised this memorial.

It got a new lease of life when a few Besant Nagarians sought the advice of professionals and got Chennai Corporation to spend some fifteen lakh rupees to restore this 1930s structure that was falling apart.

The work was carried out a couple of years ago; the civic team even set up floodlights to light up the memorial ( and it looked grand at night), grew a lawn around it and erected a protective metalwork around the structure to prevent vandalism.

Today, the lights are gone or broken, the lawn has dried up, the metal fence is ripped and some parts stolen and young men carry on with what they think this Memorial stands here for - to imprint messages of imagined romance and to answer Nature's call.

So does it pay to lay lawns and raise hedges, erect sculptures and improve lighting in public spaces?