Category: misc/personal

love walking in ny. walked from time square to lincoln center and back again. the trees were doing something beautiful, their fluorescent yellow leaves illuminating a dense smoky sky. met these beauties along 9th avenue, close to fordham. and then there was the metropolitan opera, mammoth, richly chandeliered, grand. filled with matthew au coin’s muscular music and eurydice’s tragic story. i wished for more tender, delicate music at times. i was most moved by her relationship with her father (rather than w orpheus). her father, her shade, her tree, the one who made a room for her out of string in the coldness of the underworld, the one who taught her how to speak again with endless love and patience after she forgot the language and memories of the living. i want to write a story about eurydice too.

#treesarelife #treesarebeautiful #nyc #newyorksky #nightsky #eurydice #metopera #metropolitanopera #lincolncenter #longwalks #music #magic

as soon as we saw him, we knew who he was. there were three of us walking together, three young teenagers braving the world of art, barely beginning to gain a footing in simple art techniques. we tried to be discreet but we were gawking.

he saw us and (shockingly) invited us to open the gate and join him in his garden. he caught sight of our sketchbooks and asked us if we were art students. we talked to him for a while, telling him about our art classes, and then one of the girls asked for his autograph. he offered to draw something for each of us. we couldn’t believe it! this was 4 years before he passed away (at 57) so he was an international star, an art giant, a legend.

we opened our sketchbooks and offered him a pen. with a few elegant lines he drew beautiful faces and signed his name. my turn came last. fearless as i was in those days, i asked for more. i said, pls write my name too, so it’s for me specifically, not just a random work of art. he complied graciously and asked me for the spelling of my name.

here u see it, in this sketch from 1983. my given name is mahrukh, which is farsi for face as beautiful as the moon (for people who live in hot countries, the moon means coolness, love and beauty in a way that’s hard to understand here).

in conclusion, sadequain’s lofty socialist values and magnanimity were real. i experienced his humility and generosity firsthand and i will always treasure the gift of this brief intersection of our lives.

#sadequain #sadequainart #islamabad #art #artclasses #sketching #oilpainting #pakistan #calligraphy #islamicart #murals #storytelling #storytime

in the great storytelling tradition of the wonderful shahram khosravi, here is a story about sadequain and i.

i think that it would be appropriate to say that sadequain (1930-1987) is to pakistan what diego rivera is to mexico. maybe even more. an iconic calligrapher and muralist, he was part of an islamic arts movement which emerged in north africa and parts of asia in the 1950s.

in this movement, “artists rejected western art concepts, and instead searched for a new visual language that reflected their own culture and heritage.” for calligraphy, it became a kind of renaissance.

not interested in “decorating the drawing rooms of the rich and powerful,” sadequain gave away innumerable paintings to friends and admirers, and painted mammoth allegorical murals in public spaces with titles like ‘the saga of labor,’ a tribute to the working class people of pakistan. a prolific painter and poet, sadequain also wrote “hundreds of rubaiyat in the style of omar khayyam.”

it just so happened that sadequain lived in islamabad, a few houses down the street from my high school.

once over summer break, i decided to take art classes close to my school. they were organized by the pakistan national council of the arts and proved to be spectacular. some of pakistan’s foremost artists came to teach us, we learned to sketch and paint with oils, we had live models who helped us capture the human body on paper and canvas, and we went on day trips to draw en plein air.

after one such trip, we were walking back to the studio when we spotted sadequain. he was sitting in his garden, wearing a crisp white kurta, enjoying a restful summer eve, a cup of tea in hand.

second part of story coming soon. [sadequain’s portrait by TJ bhatti + his calligraphy at lahore museum]

#sadequain #sadequainart #islamabad #art #artclasses #sketching #oilpainting #pakistan #calligraphy #islamicart #murals #storytelling #storytime