Fans of India's oldest top-flight soccer club are readying a 25,500-square-foot hand-painted tifo (banner) when their team, Mohun Bagan Super Giant, hosts Bengaluru FC in the Indian Super League at Salt Lake Stadium in Kolkata on Monday.
A group of ardent Mohun Bagan supporters has camped out in a field 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) from the stadium for weeks, mounting all-night vigils and constructing bamboo scaffolding to protect its artwork from the elements.
The completed banner will be 340 feet long and 75 feet wide, which the Mohun Bagan fans say will topple the world record for largest hand-painted tifo that was created by supporters of Swedish side IFK Norrkoping and measured over 16,000 square feet.
A tifo is a choreographed display created by sports fans in a stadium that may include banners, mosaics and other elements.
"We painted it in five parts for 20 days straight," Prasenjit Sarkar, a member of the Mariners Base Camp fan group, told Reuters.
Mohun Bagan, established in 1889, are also known by their nickname 'the Mariners' and the club's crest shows a sailing boat.
The banner, painted with about 20 people working at a time, will be held together by massive ropes usually used to lash steamer ferries to the dock, Sarkar added.
It took a day-and-a-half for Subhojit Kundu, an art student, to travel 1,000 km from Jagdalpur in Chhattisgarh state by train to participate in the project for a few days.
"I couldn't get a reserved seat, so I didn't have a seat for much of the journey," Kundu said. "It was quite crowded and I somehow found some standing space.
"I only had a small role here but just being a part of this is a big deal for me."
Tanmoy Chakraborty missed work and commuted 60 kilometers each way almost every day to help mix the banner's colour palette.
"I had to find ways to make time," he said. "We'd start in the morning and work till 2 a.m. Several people stayed all night to guard it."
Another supporter, Dipika Manna, said the project took more than a year to come to fruition.
A Norrkoping spokesperson told Reuters their fans do not see making banners as a competition.
"They do them because of their love for the city of Norrkoping and the club," the spokesperson said.
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