On May 15 when citizens of Bengaluru converged at the 100-year-old market at Murphy Town, they were treated to an array of fine foods – biryani, kebabs, halwa and other sweetmeats – as they shopped for fresh cuts at the meat stalls. While they dug into the spread laid out for them, they were also encouraged to walk about and interact with the various busy stakeholders of the market (butchers and other vendors). The shops were enlivened with decorative paintings, gifted by an artist who worked on her creations right here.

This was part of the santhe (celebration, in Kannada) hosted by the vendors of the market to reach out to people outside their immediate neighbourhoods.

Earlier in the month, on a rainy afternoon, interdisciplinary artist Maya Janine D'Costa introduced us to her latest project – Mamsa Santhe – over a warming lunch of steaming hot white rice, spicy tomato-bottle gourd sambar, crunchy cold cucumber slices and a peppery East-Indian beef dish (the meat marinated in masala, pressure cooked, shredded and tossed together with slivers of crispy capsicum and fried potato wedges). This was a collaborative project with the India Foundation for the Arts, under Project 560, a foundation programme that encourages projects with a plan for neighbourhood engagement, supported by Sony Pictures Entertainment Fund.

D'Costa had been on the project for four months ahead of the launch of Santhe – working out of this ancient market in Murphy Town. This is an Indo-Saracenic site, marked as a heritage precinct by the Indian National Trust for Arts and Cultural Heritage (INTACH).

"This area used to be known as Knoxpet before it was named after British municipal engineer WH Murphy, who planned the layout of the market and the neighbourhood," D'Costa said. Over the months she has been "using drawing as a medium of friendship" to examine "the relationship of the market space to the bodies that inhabit it – butchers, animals (living and dead) and customers". And the time spent here has resulted in artworks of the place, the people and the peripherals, which culminated into an event on Sunday, May 15.

Murphy Town isn't exactly a go-to place for people in the city to shop for meats, but there was a time when they made the effort to do so. "Today, it's one of the lesser known markets; it's been passed over for the more famous Russell Market in Shivaji Nagar or the popular Johnson Market in Richmond Town," she told us. "This meat market at Murphy Town is a local neighbourhood spot that caters to the mostly working class Tamil Dalit Christian and Muslim communities in and around the area and Ulsoor. However, unlike the others, it is open from 6.30 am till 10 pm, keeping pace with the flexible work schedules of their customer base," she added.

D'Costa's discovery of the market was happenstance as well. She stumbled upon it when she was pursuing her undergraduate degree at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology.

"Foodie family and friends chose this place to buy fresh meats, ditching cold storage stores in their own upper-class neighbourhoods. They liked their Saturday shopping trips because they could select their cuts. In fact, the cuts and the recommendation of the butcher dictated the Sunday meal's menu," she said.

She accompanied friends to the Murphy Town meat market, and nudged her childhood memories – the sensory excitement of being in such a space and around people. D'Costa channelled this new awareness into an undergraduate project, where she documented the marginal spaces of the city, the little strongholds created by marginalised communities within mainstream neighbourhoods.

So with Cubbon Park she focussed on the areas used for cruising and sex work. Likewise, when it came to Kammanahalli, the focus was on the streets where African students lived and the area around the Tannery Road, a space for leather-and-meat market in the middle of the city.

D'Costa established relationships and friendships in the neighbourhood around the Tannery Road by holding art classes for the children. "We moved away from drawings of the mountains, Indian flags and rivers to self-portraits representing themselves and the things that they saw around them, not just the places they'd never been to," she explained.

Her creative endeavour was aborted on suspicion of her being a journalist sniffing around for details on the mid-day meals programme. D'Costa then ventured into the meat shops in that neighbourhood. Drawing at those shops and doing portraits of the shopkeepers inspired her to move away from "the atelier-studio practice of drawing and painting; instead, the workshop itself was the art".

On returning to the city, after a couple of years of being away, she began to notice the way beef and meat-eating were suddenly contentious again. "And so, I decided to continue that project of drawing in the meat market," she said, offering insight into Mamsa Santhe.

Over these four months, she set up an easel and would work at the market every day because of a self-imposed limitation. She wouldn't draw out of photographs because the butchers didn't want to be photographed. She'd start with tiny sketches before coming to the portraits because "initially, I didn't know where these drawings were going and the butchers were suspicious of my intentions and wanted to understand what was in it for me," she admitted shyly. But once she won them over, they became enthusiastic collaborators to her project.

One of the subtle shifts to showcasing works of art in the project was the fact that the art stayed back where it was created. "A tangible element of Santhe was that the drawings were fitted into golden frames, as the butchers wanted them, and then put up in their shops. I couldn't have shown the paintings anywhere else either," she said.

"So for the paintings to be seen, people had to go inside the shops, stand close to the meat, observe the cutting, the sound of the knives, the smells – to engage all their senses," she added.

It's an apt celebration of an old market, and D'Costa hopes more people will return to the markets in their neighbourhoods and engage in conversation and commerce.

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