The picture shows four young men in khaki crossing a road in Kannur in The Beatles style. The zebra crossing is freshly painted to look three-dimensional. Kannur Collector Mir Mohammed Ali posted this curious little picture on his Twitter account and wrote, “Initiative taken by the Station House Officer (SHO) at Kannavam Police Station, collaborating with local artists to promote road safety in a remote part of the district. Good work.”

He also posted another picture comparing the Kannur picture with the original Beatles photo – in which the four legendary musicians are seen crossing the Abbey Road back in the ‘60s, a picture that had become hugely popular. It was the album cover of the band’s final recorded LP album called Abbey Road and the penultimate Beatles album to be released.

While calling for comments, Collector Mir said that he merely posted the news, and it was all the work of the Kannavam police SI Ganeshan.

The SI, a man of few words, says the thought had been there for a while now. “We wanted to find some way to reduce accidents on the road and when I came across the album cover, I thought we could replicate that here,” he says. He asked the help of artist Mudra Vinodan to paint the zebra lines in 3D in front of the Chittariparamba Higher Secondary school. Vinodan, with the help of another artist Nidheesh, finished the work in two days.

Kannur zebra crossing above; The Beatles on Abbey Road below

Ganeshan then got four student police cadets to walk over it, the way Paul, John, George and Ringo did on Abbey Road. It seems to have worked. “Vehicles tend to slow down, reducing the risk of accidents,” Ganeshan says.

Vinodan is also behind another noted work – of painting a whole school building to look like a train and the entrances to the classrooms looking like coaches. “That was two years ago, for the Macheri M LP School in Mowenchery,” he says. He is a full-time artist and was all game when Ganeshan called him for the zebra work. He is not aware of The Beatles album, the image of which he has replicated. “I tried out the idea at a place near my home when sir suggested the idea, and then did it,” he says.

The thought also came from a newspaper report, says policeman on duty at Kannavam Police Station, Basheer. “There was a news report that there was no zebra crossing in front of the school. A survey was done then and the 3D painting of zebra crossing happened based on the suggestion of the Kannavam police station,” Basheer says.