Passing on, bare feet… by Pritish Nandy

I do not want to talk about my friend Husain here. Everyone has bored you enough with that already. Every hustler, every socialite, every idiot has claimed undying friendship with him. So, instead, I will tell you about the man I knew.

Husain had few friends. Very few. I was close to him but even I would hesitate to describe myself as a friend. A close acquaintance perhaps. An admirer, certainly. We had lots of fun together. But unlike many of those who hung around him, I knew exactly how much he valued his private space. So I never intruded. We did some interesting things together, however. I held the first Sotheby’s auction in Mumbai where a Husain fetched Rs 10 lakh, an unbelievable sum in those days. We never thought it was possible. But it happened, like most things happened with Husain. Miraculously.

What was so special about him? I think it was his amazing mastery over his craft gained by years of billboard painting which taught him how to use space and colour in a dramatic, powerful way. Most artists are too busy being artists. They are embarrassed to draw, fearing that critics would call them illustrators. Husain, on the other hand, fearlessly used his drawing skills to emerge as one of the greatest painters of his century, teaching us once again that the way to immortality lies in being simple, direct, uncomplicated. Husain never had to pretend to be anything other than what he was. That’s what made him great.

We did a book together of ancient Sanskrit love poems. He illustrated my translations with passion, delight and immeasurable magic. Some of them we published in The Illustrated Weekly, which I then edited. He signed off the drawings as Bhootlingam but everyone knew, at first look, that they were Husain’s. They were scintillating drawings and we later added a few more and brought out a book together. This time, he told me: Chalo, let’s use my own name. It was the third of my three volume collection of translations from Sanskrit love poetry and we had so much fun doing it simply because he never felt diminished to be an illustrator.

He made toys, lots of them. He made fun furniture. He took photographs, did a few books. He wrote poetry and I published him for the first time in a poetry magazine I edited in those days from Kolkata. He was always there in my poetry anthologies because I saw him as a powerful representative voice. I remember a big portfolio of his poems that he did years ago, in a limited edition. I think there may be a copy somewhere in my library. And he made films. I remember his first short film, Through the Eyes of a Painter. It was quirky, intriguing, not exactly the kind of cinema I watch. I told him so. He was disappointed but that made no difference. He kept showing me the first cut of his films. And I kept giving him my views on them, often not so favourable.

We went on long walks. He would take me into tiny tea shops in the dark innards of the island city. They would welcome him like a long lost son. Some of them had his drawings hanging on their walls. Just as I have so many of his scribbles and drawings on mine. He inaugurated a show of my drawings for my children in Kolkata in the tiny Gallery 88 on Shakespeare Sarani. Amitabh and Anupam enacted an old Sanskrit play on the street outside. Those were the days when art, poetry, music, theatre, everything came together magically and we were like a bunch of friends having fun. The entire city came to a standstill!

Yes, Husain was a generation older. But we shared one thing in common: Our love for attempting different things. He was not just a painter as I was never only a writer. He was bored to death in Parliament. So he asked me to join him there. I tried. But my efforts bore fruit too late. So, by the time I was in Parliament he was out and having much more fun than I did. What drove him always were new ideas, new shows, new books– and the infinite joys of popular art, music, movies, theatre, poetry. He hated pretensions. He never wanted to be an eminent artist. He wanted to be popular, to reach out to millions of people. He adored and envied Amitabh because of the connect he had with the masses. (And ofcourse with beautiful women, he would say in an aside.)

I will miss Husain with a sense of guilt. I failed him when he needed me most. I could not persuade the Government to give him the protection he needed when he was hounded, his works vandalised. Also because, after he left, I promised to go and spend time with him but never did. I thought he was immortal. But even the immortal go away one day.