March 2, 2002

The completed piece of the standing figure cast in plaster attracted considerable notice in the then small art world of Lahore. It was in the forties that art began to be discussed in newspaper columns. The two English dailies — The Tribune and Civil and Military Gazette — found space to include critiques on art exhibitions, dramatic and dance performances and musical concerts.

Roop Krishma and Badri Prasad Shingloo had begun to contribute articles with their commentaries on paintings and sculpture on view. While Roop was an experienced and established painter, Badri Prasad was a dilettante with a difference. With a Master’s degree in science, he was a gifted musicologist and performer, a keen painter and was given to writing poems. It was only appropriate that Roop and Badri Prasad took to writing on the arts.

My studio activities also activated a few professional journalists to cover art events. Hans Raj Vohra came out with an article on my new sculpture, entitled The Local Epstein. Charles Fabric wrote: “The best he has done in sculpture — in the enveloped figure the image of the mother and the child is integrated into one.”

The appearance of Dr Fabric on the scene brought about debate and discussion on the visual and performing arts of the time in Lahore. He was also in residence at the Visva Bharati, Santiniketan, for some time, before he migrated to Lahore. He delivered several popular lectures on European painting and sculpture of the middle ages.

Under the auspices of the Punjab University he conducted a lecture tour to Taxila and Harappa which I attended. We became close friends and he enjoyed the freedom of my studio and took to painting along with my other associates. Some time later, on the eve of the Partition of India, he was appointed the curator of the Central Museum in Lahore and soon after he married Ratna.

To the last he remained a friend of the artist. Immediately before the beginning of the Second World War, quite a few professional men, scholars and intellectuals fled Germany, Poland and Austria. Some came to India and travelled to Lahore. Dr Hermann Goetz, the art historian, was one of them, with whom I struck a friendship. He liked to come to my studio now and then. years later, when he was the director of the museum in Baroda, I remember, he acquired one of my paintings, exhibited in an exhibition organized by the Art Society of India in Bombay, for his museum.

The uncertainty of the existence of my studio remained a constant cause for worry. My landlord above, Messrs Shalimar Paints, asked me to vacate the basement. The search began once again. I found a place on top of some offices on The Mall. Some new students, mostly college girls, enrolled. Mrs Suraiya Tyabji was one of the new entrants who kept up her interest in painting till the last.

I was unsettled soon again. The Library League offered to accommodate me till I found a suitable place. It was not an inviting place for my purpose as the hall was in use for multipurpose. Young Serbjeet Singh, who is now a fairly well known painter and film maker, came to study art with me here.