On a warm summer day, amongst the buzzling bylanes of MG road, Bengaluru, leaning over a random wall, was a guy sticking some posters as he scrolled through Facebook with his other hand. The irony is very striking – he was posting on a wall as he was scrolling through posts on his wall. That’s when it hit me: maybe the walls of the city are the OG social media wall after all. We scroll past them mindlessly as endless voices speak over each other.Illustration: Pariplab ChakrabortyI’m still new to the city. I looked up the ‘places to see’, ticked off the ‘food to eat’, but all of that feels like it has shrouded what the city truly is. Maybe if I looked at the ‘brick-and-mortar’ feed buzzing past me all the time, and the city would unravel itself?Most walls flaunt how aesthetic and elegant they are. Some invite you for a cozy coffee, promising you to make you forget the hustle and bustle on the other side. Others offer a glimpse of what deep pockets can get you in the city. On one side are murals – huge and bright – are making people stop and click. On the other are chaotic graffiti on abandoned shutters and peeling paints over battered walls, not warranting a second look.Mural on a wall in Bengaluru.Every glance decides what becomes part of the city’s open-air museum and what is dismissed as vandalism. This is how the city takes shape. It reveals what it was, what it could have been, and what it is becoming – from raw and real to manicured and polished.It took nothing more than an unattended facade to give a snapshot of the politics in posters. Visibility is power, and the walls are its front lines. Every election cycle, the city walls seem to turn into partisan scoreboards and canvasses to stake territorial claims. In this era of algorithmic echo chambers, these walls speak simply show how the tides are turning. The government too leaves an imprint of its agenda across wherever it has authority – Metro walls, government buildings, public parks – the space for the authority to voice its self-praise is huge. Dissent rarely seems to find place, these days, however and when it is, it is quickly deemed vandalism and snubbed out by break of dawn. Paint is power.Mural on a wall in Bengaluru.In the city of hustle and startups, we can expect nothing less. On one side, facades are rented out, advertising to sell us more aspirations and dreams. And right beneath them, as we bring down our chins to reality, a whole other economy is crawling on. Dozens of street-preneurs use the by-lane walls to advertise their services and wares – on the extreme opposite of the spectrum, things we absolutely need.Under the grand metro mural celebrating the women frontline workers near Vivekananda road metro, as I impatiently wait for the red light to turn green, an old woman swarms through the traffic unable to earn her daily bread. The city walls contrast the reality it faces in ways more than one. Extravagant art depicting nature and magnificent birds are made on the very walls, built by cutting decades-old trees and filling up lakes.In another corner, we see a crude sketch of Ambedkar on the tinsheets of makeshift slums of the city. The utopia of the walls maybe is a constant reminder of where we, as people, should head to. The contrast is perhaps meant to keep us grounded.Sushant Kanumuri is a PhD scholar at ATREE Bangalore. He loves telling stories, through words and clicks. All photos are by the author.We’ve grown up hearing that “it’s the small things” that matter. That’s true, of course, but it’s also not – there are Big Things that we know matter, and that we shouldn’t take our eyes, minds or hearts off of. As journalists, we spend most of our time looking at those Big Things, trying to understand them, break them down, and bring them to you.And now we’re looking to you to also think about the small things – the joy that comes from a strangers’ kindness, incidents that leave you feeling warm, an unexpected conversation that made you happy, finding spaces of solidarity. Write to us about your small things at thewiresmallthings@gmail.com in 800 words or less, and we will publish selected submissions. We look forward to reading about your experiences, because even small things can bring big joys.Read the series here.