She is not an artist by profession, but an
economist and a cultural anthropologist, who finally decided that art was where
her inclinations lay. Through her elaborate educational process, she discovered
that all the things which ailed the world could not be solved, as she had
hoped, through what she had studied. Instead, she took to making abstract art,
using nails, glue, cement and other tactile material. With emphatic gestures
she layers cement and paint, slashing her canvasses and stitching them up
again; sometimes adding fragments of the lyrical, Urdu script, from letters her
mother wrote her. She works with textures and moods in protest and in reconciliation.
Walking up two flights of stairs, I entered a
semi-dark room, where a young man was seated at the piano. The simple harmonies
that tinkled across the room were so poignant that for days thereafter I
listened in deep silence, searching for those sublime notations in memory. The
music was written by the French composer Jean-Phillipe Rameau for the
harpsichord, later transcribed for the piano. Composed mostly for social gatherings
of a rich patron, Rameau’s eighteenth century compositions have a soulfulness
that defy the images of debauchery associated with the time. The piano was
being played by Saba’s college going son, Aman, who was home from the US for a
holiday.
Saba is also a student of the piano. I however,
no longer play. My piano is too old now and the piano tuner has given up. So I
console myself, saying that years of playing have enhanced my appreciation and
enjoyment of the music that others play. However, this is not the whole truth,
because I do miss playing the piano, a lot. But, it will have to do.
The studio is one floor above. It is no ordinary
barsati but an elaborate space with large French windows on all sides, letting
in plenty of light. It was a hot summer afternoon, but the air-conditioning so effective
that one did not feel the heat. An expensive, pine-wood work table took centre stage
of this studio, while most of the wall space had canvasses stacked against
them. Over cups of green tea, looking at her canvasses, we discussed the
inspiration behind her art. The studio
is built atop her residence which overlooks the deer park in Safdarjung Enclave
and Saba says that peacocks come visit her during the rainy season. The studio
sits virtually in the middle of the floor space, and I momentarily imagined
peacocks with their feathers spread out, frolic in the rain, circulating the perimeter
of the studio walls in an ecstatic dance, watching the artist at play 
What an inspiring place to be able to work in,
I thought to myself, as I sat down to work the next day, my threads, fabrics
and other tools spread out on my bed. I have a study, where I normally work but,
somehow, I find it very comfortable sewing on the bed. It’s spacious and
sitting against the back-rest, my feet sprawled on the bed, is good for my
posture: I do not hunch over the fabric as I embroider. I looked out of my window
on the eighth floor in Palam Vihar and sighed: no chance of any peacocks
dancing here. Instead, I have dull grey pigeons and their smelly poop for
company, with the occasional, yellow beaked Mynah to add colour.
Saba has a very involved process of working
which could take as long as six months to a couple of years to finish a canvas.
She works with unconventional materials, using thick cement and so much Fevicol
that an art restorer once told her that she could build a house with her
canvasses. Saba says that when working, she does not ponder on a definitive
idea, nor try and build any kind of narrative. She just lets her emotions guide
her. When you talk to Saba, she is very articulate, well read and highly
opinionated. And the latter is reflected in her canvasses, albeit in an
abstract sort of way. 
Though not a practitioner, or a believer in
organized religion, Saba was born in a Muslim family in India who chose not to go
to Pakistan at the time of partition. She is married to Amit, a Hindu by birth.
Amit’s father and
grandparents were from the North-west frontier, now in Pakistan, and had to
forcibly leave to take refuge in Delhi. Neither Saba nor Amit practice their respective
faiths. Yet, despite this, she feels upset at the kind of prejudice there is
regarding Muslims today. I guess, identity is something we have been conditioned
to find, through profession, nationality and the religion we belong to, whether
we practice or not. And even though her work is steeped in the abstract, the
underlying thoughts do pertain to and arise from engagement with the physical
world.
Her art is difficult to define. There are many
definitions of art and I think each artist, more or less, re-defines this by
the art they make. And as such the parameters of what is art or not are in a
constant state of flux. There was a time in the history of art when abstract
work was related to the spiritual dimensions of being, but I wondered, as I
studied Saba’s canvasses, if this was true of abstract art today. She speaks of
her art, as “a visceral, emotive response to the world”
which seems to be more about emotions than detachment from being in the world
and dwelling on the essential spirit that is unchangeable, unaffected by the
dramas of life that move us to tears, rage and more.
A lot of my own work, because of the process by which I erase form rather
than create it, could be classified as abstract, but that is not how I think of
it. The works I do also arise from what I am feeling at the time. It’s usually
at an intense, emotional state, when there is little mental clarity, that I do
most of my embroidery. I am not as focussed on the divine to access the
essential peacefulness of the spirit as I am able to during meditation. But in
the process of letting the thoughts spill out, not always analyzing them, I do
feel refreshed. I also find the repetitive process of embroidery therapeutic
and calming. Saba, on the other hand, reveals that she experiences complete physical
exhaustion, with a mental high. Becoming quite obsessive about what she is
working on, her mind she says “doesn’t stop ticking”.
In the 1970’s,
when Saba was debating career options, art was not something those with good
academic grades opted for. It was somehow not considered a reliable profession
because earning through art could be a very difficult task. I relate well to
this, not because I made similar choices, but this prejudice has tailed me throughout
my life and being a full-time artist has been difficult to adjust to. Somewhere,
deeply embedded in memory, is the idea that this is not work and even today, I
do my embroidery late at night when all my other work is completed.
The work disturbs: I feel the violence that has
been enacted and of the response of the material that’s been violated but I
also see elements of restraint. After all, the material she uses is inanimate;
the nails being hammered are iron, not another human being bashed against a
wall. It’s like when I sew, thoughts go in and out of the fabric, causing a
rupture in its construction, which is evocative of the way I feel, but the
repetitive motion is meditative and heals the rupture in my equanimity. The
feelings may be angry or venomous, but the actions are restrained through such
processes: the emotion sublimated. In Saba’s work too, I get a sense of
something similar being enacted through her art-making process .
I see frustration and rebellion in the way that
I assume Saba must throw the thick layers of cement and plaster, for the
textures I see on her finished canvases. These highly tactile canvasses, which could support the roof of a home,
seem as solid as her convictions. A thick layer of white cement is left to crack in changing temperature,
without controlling the moisture as construction workers do when they carefully
build the walls of a home. I Imagine Saba cracking open somebody’s close
mindedness, in a similar way. Then as she nails it in, I laughingly envisage that
this is how she keeps the dimensions of a mind she has opened in place: by
hammering the point in.
