Treasures of Time Anatomy of a Mural (Hardback)

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In an interview Sadequain was asked by the insinuating reporter why he was attracted to the powerful and traced the way to corridors of powers. Sadequain’s curt response was that he was never attracted to the corridors of power and on the contrary, it was the corridors of power which chased him. To prove Sadequain’s point one of the headlines of a newspaper put it aptly, “Sadequain is a showman because he has something to show.” In the newspaper, Friday Times of September 21, 2007, journalist Khalid Hasan wrote, “He was humble, and yet if a rich man or a high official tried to throw around his weight or pull rank, Sadequain made it a point to put him in his place. Noor-ul-Hassan Jaffrey, a senior Civil Service of Pakistan (CSP) officer, who later, along with his wife, the poet Ada Jaffrey, became close friends of Sadequain, once went on an official visit to Mangla, where Sadequain was painting his giant powerhouse mural. Jaffrey was one of the big tops in the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA). Sadequain was told to be ready for Jaffrey’s arrival. When Jaffrey arrived, Sadequain was nowhere to be found. He had simply vanished. He reappeared after Jaffrey was safely gone. That was Sadequain’s ego, but it only came into play when someone tried to gain his attention because of rank or money.” In this day and age when yes-men ride the coattails of the high and mighty, Sadequain defied all norms. But genius of a person eventually finds its expression. “You cannot suppress a genius for very long,” Sadequain used to say. Sadequain’s genius found its expression in his work. The book Mystic Expressions – an Odyssey to Exaltation with Ghalib, Iqbal, Faiz and Sadequain rightfully describes “Sadequain was arguably an embodiment of the spirit of Picasso, grandeur of Michelangelo, poetic prowess of Omar Khayyam, and calligraphic skills of Yaqoot.” The question I am trying to answer is that how did Sadequain get engaged at the State Bank of Pakistan in the most visible, highly ambitious, and uniquely prestigious artistic endeavor in the history of Pakistan. Not to deviate from the specific subject of this book, mention must be made that the path to the monumental undertaking at the State Bank of Pakistan was paved by many other equally improbable events in Sadequain’s life such as his first solo exhibition in Karachi in 1955 at the residence of H.S. Sohrawardi, Pakistan’s fifth Prime Minister. It would have been interesting if an art historian had researched how a young migrant from India, belonging to middle class with no known connections with people in high places managed to climb this corridor of power. After the initial foray into the drawing room of H.S. Sohrawardi, crowded with the movers and shakers of politics and business, Sadequain found himself in the limelight again in 1957 at his retrospective inaugurated by the Prime Minister of Pakistan, which was held at the historic Frere Hall in Karachi. Naturally the event was a major attraction for the high and mighty. Interestingly, Sadequain came full circle in 1986, after thirty years, back to the Frere Hall to work on the stupendous ceiling mural titled, Arz-o- Samawaat, which proved to be his last undertaking before he passed away on February 10, 1987.