There is a riot of colours and each colour tells a story. This is the world according to Tassaduq Sohail, a contemporary visionary and one of the most distinguished painters from Pakistan. The world seems freshly created with animals and trees in the ‘Garden of earthly delights’. Elephants with trunks raised, parrots, peacocks and other birds, fishes with red colour streaking their mouths, men and women in all shapes and contours. The colours seem to be on the verge of breathing. Something is about to happen. An incident is about to take place. Probably more than one story, as figures crowd a partitioned canvas, each locked in their own story and, yet contributing to a larger whole; a story which will never be told in words but only in the vibrant colours of a Sohail painting.

The hours of late night are early morning for Sohail. He gets up very early and busies himself in feeding animals and birds. “What time do you get up, Mr Sohail?” he mimics the voice of an old Englishman who had asked him in London. On hearing his answer of “three o’ clock,” the old man began to explain that this is the witching hour when witches and all sorts of creatures are flying about looking for people to whom they can grant favours. In London, he would feed wild foxes, and in Karachi, he goes out for kites and crows. He begins each day by giving chunks of meat and innards to kites. Previously he would go out but now feeds the birds from his balcony. He explains that he would clean and cut the meat so that the birds can swallow it easily.

After many years of feeding foxes, dogs, kites and all sorts of animals at this time every day, Sohail states that he is saving this time now for painting. “The meat began to rot because of loadshedding, so I had to give up feeding kites,” he says regretfully. “I now paint in the witching hour, which is the best time of the day for me,” he says with a chuckle. The result is as expected, the choice of time influencing the subjects and themes. I was particularly struck by a horrifying face which could be death or pestilence. His recent work includes ‘Medusas and monsters’, the Haft-bala inspired by Tilism-e-hoshruba, the classical dastaan.

He has a great affinity with the dastaans of yore. At one point he had started working on an illustrated version of Qissa Hatim Tai, armed with a copy of the tale borrowed from his friend Intizar Husain, but then moved on to other projects. Creatures from these tales, however, continue to haunt his imagination, including the cleft-footed pichal-pairy and mermaids. “I see mermaids walking all over Karachi,” he says, “But I have not been able to write their story as yet. One of these days I will write it and you will see.”

Sohail started his career as a short story writer. I remember reading his story Balishtiya in an old issue of Funoon, edited by Ahmed Nadeem Qasimi, who was as distinguished an editor as he was a short story writer. He came back to his old love after a gap of many years and published a collection of his writings called Tanhai ka safar. The book was favourably reviewed and two of his stories were translated into English by the well-known scholar and editor, Muhammad Umar Memon.

His most extended literary endeavour is the still unfinished autobiography drawing its name aptly from a famous couplet by Ghalib, Meh-rukhon kay wastay. Like Ghalib, he too learned the art of painting to draw the attention of “the moon-faced ones,” but unlike Ghalib, he went on to describe as many of them as he could manage.

Born in 1930, he regards it as a mistake, “but not mine,” he laughs out aloud. “I was conceived in Amritsar and born in Jallundhur, which is my favourite place in the world.” However, he has never been able to go back to this lost paradise, explaining that “each time I came back to Karachi I would see many changes. I felt very sad when I could not find the familiar haunts. So if Karachi changes so quickly, then Jallundhur must have changed too!” After Partition, his family moved to Lahore. “I don’t even want to talk about Lahore. I never liked it. No fault of the city, it is the people who live there,” he gives another strong opinion.

Regarding him as a threat to the girls, his family packed him to Karachi in 1952 or 53. He studied at the Islamia College and soon came under the spell of Muhammad Hassan Askari, the celebrated critic and teacher. Askari dubbed him as a qissa-go for his talent of talebearing about the goings-on in the literary world. He also served as Joint Secretary of the Halqa Arbab-i-Zauq while N.M. Rashid was the Secretary.

Painting came up as a second career for Sohail, almost by default. When he went to London in 1961, he took up painting to relieve his loneliness and win female friends. He succeeded on both fronts and soon painting became a passion. He landed up in evening classes but felt very inadequate when asked to draw a model. Lacking in formal training, he felt that he could not draw a proper face, so he smudged the painting with his hands, changing and distorting what he had painted. Expecting to be thrown out, he was surprised when the teacher asked him to see her after the class. “I have waited so long for you!” she told him. “You are a real artist, while the others are copying machines.” After this, there was no turning back for Sohail. He started evening classes at the St. Martin School of Art and began to spend long hours there every day giving up only when he came to Karachi.

He remembers his first exhibition at London in 1978 but has lost count of how many exhibitions have been held, or even of how many paintings he has completed since then. “They must be in thousands. These include watercolours, pastels, pen and ink and whatnot, but I have kept no record,” he says.

A regular visitor to Karachi in his London days, Sohail settled here in 2001. His apartment is also his studio and sitting in front of an unfinished canvas, he spins his yarns and one tall tale leads to the other. Mellowed with age, he still reserves his harshest comments for the art establishment, critics, and those gallery owners whom he regards as nothing but upwardly mobile picture frame-makers. “Painters die because this is the only way they can make the prices of their paintings go up!” he says, mischievously.

“I need not die right now as I can survive on very little money. Other artists die because their subject matter dries up. I have many things to paint: people, parrots, pigeons, cats, dogs, even bearded men.” He takes a pause and explains why most of the men in his paintings wear beards now. “Beards are in demand these days. And I enjoy beards, especially if they are growing on cheeks red as apples.” he says with a relish and waves his brush like a magic wand.