Two events from my childhood continue to linger strong and fresh in my memory lane. The first is of a Japanese theatre performance entitled 'The magic paintbrush' about a paintbrush that enabled the user to create anything out of nothing. 

This reflected a childish fantasy of mine to create a world of opportunity out of a simple flick of a brush. This remain of fantasy until the second event took place.

One memorable summer in Nathiagali I was taken to meet a 'great man', as my grandfather put it, and it was this meeting with the legendry painter Ismail Gulgee that taught me how truly possible my fantasy was.

Nervously I held my grandfather's hand and my flimsy sketch pad as we walked towards the bizarre mosaic covered house nicknamed, 'The eye of Gulgee'. A regular visitor to Nathiagali, I had never been inside that strange house and with childish expectancy I visualised a fictional world, an exotic dreamland as fantastic as its exterior with the mysterious Gulgee at its centre, the wizard who held this world together through his powerful magic. Needless to say I was disappointed when I entered an untidy room stained with paints and smelling of turpentine.

Bare, untidy canvases were stacked all over the studio. On one end was a large canvas painted over with rust paint. Otherwise it was blank, almost starved of the artist's attention.

As I looked up to the wrinkled face, the eyes twinkled back at me, the lips parted in a slow smile and a soft husky voice and said, “So this is the little artist?” With a trembling voice I mumbled a greeting and was steered to a moth eaten stool and told to sit quietly. Gulgee was about to start his work. He was standing at his table, mixing colours on a large brush, twice the size of his hand. He seemed so frail and weak I wondered how he would manage to paint on such a huge canvas.

He stood at one end of the room, the canvas on the other, openly challenging him to attack it. And attack he did.
I jumped in my seat when with a sudden movement he darted towards the canvas and with a swish of his magic paintbrush spread out a series of beautiful, vibrant colours. His body danced and moved with his every stroke. His small and frail figure was transformed into that of a dervish, a dancer lost in devotion to his Lord and his art.

Through his shirt I could see the muscles flexing in his back, his small arms tautening and loosening faster than one could blink. I could not take my eyes off this spectacle. Gulgee, the man, had transformed into Gulgee the magician. He had somehow possessed the mysterious magic paintbrush, I thought. Until I realised that it was his inner talent that gave the paintbrush its magic touch.

I left his studio that day, a small girl with her little sketch pad. Every summer after that first meeting I would see him in Nathiagali and every year my awe and admiration for the man and magician grew.

Now he is gone; his life was tragically and cruelly snuffed out. The man may have left this world, but his magic endures. In his art, his studio up in the mountains and in my memories he lives on.

As with every death one wishes that there should have been more time, more chances, more opportunities. In Gulgee's case he did not need the time most of us yearn for. He had given himself to his art and fulfilled his dream.
For me it was that dream, that vision and that fantasy which the power of Gulgee's magic paintbrush turned into reality.