1 week Ago By Sachin Sharma
Vadodara: Crocodiles on city streets during the flood last month inspired memes and videos which depicted crocodiles as demanding a traffic island dedicated to them. The city may eventually get one, with Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) now having a large crocodile sculpture and artists asking for a traffic circle to display it. The city has many circles with sculptures of animals or even those named after them, but none after the crocodile.
The most iconic is the Kala Ghoda Circle with the sculpture of Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III on a horse. The others are the Genda (rhino) Circle, Chakli (sparrow) Circle, Squirrel Circle, Bull Circle and the VUDA Circle which has a lion at its centre. The city does not have a single rhino, and the only lions are in the zoo, but the city does have over 300 crocodiles in the Vishwamitri river.
In the monsoon, it is common to see them walking on streets. This had led to people taking a dig that the crocodiles were out on the streets holding protests for a crocodile circle. Few know that a sculpture that is nearly the size of a large adult crocodile has already been made from scrap and kept at the Harni sculpture park .
Those who made the sculpture are trying to convince the the VMC to have a ‘Crocodile Circle'. A city lawyer who started working on scrap sculptures with the help from artisans had executed the project. "We were given the scrap by the VMC to make the sculpture.
The civic body approved our project last year and we started working on it in Dec. We even dismantled it once as we were not happy with it and remade it. The work ended in Jan," said Ajay Somani.
As the sculpture is kept at the sculpture park where the number of visitors is not very high, it did not catch the attention of many. It got widely noticed after the recent buzz around crocodiles on social media. Somani said the sculpture is 13 feet long and has a width of around 3 feet with a height of about 1.
5 feet. He said the dimensions were selected based on the size of the crocodiles found in the river around the time when the project was conceptualized. According to Somani, they were keen on having a circle or a traffic island on the theme of crocodiles and had discussed the possibility with VMC officials earlier.
Whenever this happens, the present sculpture could be moved to the new location. According to him, the junction of Jail Road and Bhimnath Bridge Road is the ideal location as a lot of crocodiles were found in the area..
