If you’ve ever traveled abroad as a tourist and you hit all the hot tourist spots in your destination city, you could not have escaped the ubiquitous souvenir shops. And in these souvenir shops, you could not have escaped the T-shirts that display the name the city and perhaps a monument or two. In Washington, DC the most popular designs are the ones that say FBI or show the Capitol or the White House, in London it’s the Underground and a message that says, “Mind the Gap” (the exhortation you hear as you travel on the “tube” to mind the space between the train and the platform as you get on or off the trains), and in Paris it’s the Eiffel Tower, hands down.

It never occurred to me that Bangalore did not have it’s own T-shirt. Well, I’m not here as a tourist. Perhaps that’s why I did not feel it as a shortcoming. I did not need a T-shirt to remind me of my time in Bangalore.

Well, if you are a tourist, or even if you’re not but would like to wear a T-shirt with Bangalore emblazoned on it, you don’t have to look very far for one.

Sandeep says he stumbled upon the idea after realising that Bangalore lacked a “belongingness” campaign. And he is not into commercial exploitation of the concept, as he is selling the T-Shirts from a single store. The shirt is priced at Rs. 150 and 20 per cent of the sale proceeds goes towards charity to two organisations — Samarthanam Trust for the Disabled and Newlife Children’s Home. “T-shirts are commonly sported by men and women and have a wider reach,” says Sandeep. For details, call 9945687099 or 22997099.

The Hindu.

So go on, what’re you waitin’ for?